Pale Fire

PALE

FIRE

A Novel By

VLADIMIR NABOKOV

LANCER BOOKS • NEW YORK

i

A LANCER fcOOK

TO V^RA

PALE FIRE

This book is published

by arrangement wtth G. P Putnam’s Sons

Mated in the U.SA.

LANCER BOOKS, INC. • 26 Wet* 47TH STREET • NEW YORK 26 , N.Y.

Contents

Foreword

7

Pale Fire

V POTM IN TOUR CANTOS

23

Commentary

53

Index

215

Thi 3 reminds me of the ludicrous
account he gave Mr. Langton, of
the despicable state of a voung
gentleman of good family. “Sir,
v hen I heard of him last, he was
running about town .shooting
cats.” And then m a sirt of
kindly reverie, he bethought him-
self tf his own favorite ra r , and
said, “Hut, Hodge shan’t be sh< t :
no, no, Hodge shall nor be shot ”

JMES BOSWELL,
the Life of Samuel Johnson

FOREWORD

Pale Fire , a poem in heroic couplets, of nine hundred
ninety-nine lines, divided into four cantos, was composed by
John Francis Shade during the last twenty days of his life,
at his residence in New Wye, Appalachia, 1XS.A.

The manuscript, mostly jl Fair Copy,
from which the present text has been faithfully printed,
consists ot eighty medium-sized index cards, on each of which
Shade reserved the pink upper line for headings (canto num-
ber, date) and used the fourteen light-blue lines for writing
out with a fine nib in a minute, tidy, remarkably clear hand,
the text of his poem, skipping a line to indicate double space*
and always using a fresh card to begin a new canto.

The short (166 lines) Canto One, with all those amusing
birds and parhelia, occupies thirteen cards. Canto Two, your*
favorite, and that shocking tour de force, Canto Three, are
identical in length (334 lines) and cover twenty-seven cards
each. Canto Four reverts to One in length and occupies again
thirteen cards, of which the last four used on the day of his
death give a Corrected Draft instead of a Fair Copy.

A methodical man, John Shade usually copied out his daity
quota of completed lines at midnight but even if he recopied
them again later, as I suspect he sometimes did, he marked his
card or cards not with the date of his final adjustments, but
with that of his Corrected Draft or first Fair Copy. I mean,
he preserved the date of actual creation rather than that of
second or third thoughts. There is a ve*y loud amusement park
right in front of my present lodgings. v
We possess in result a complete calendar of his work. Canto
One was begun in the small hours of July 2 and completed on
July 4, He started the next canto on his birthday and finished
it on July 11. Another week was devoted to Canto Three.

7

FALE FIRE

Canto Four was begun on July 19, and as aheady noted, the
last third of its text (lines 949-999) is supplied by a Cor-
rected Draft. This is extremely rough in appearance, teeming
with devasting erasures and cataclysmic insertions, and does
not follow the lines of the card as rigidly as the Fair Copy
does. Actually, it turns out to be beautifully accurate when
you once make the plunge *nd compel yourself to open your
eyes m the limpid depths under its contused surface. It con-
tains not one gappy line, not one doubtful reading. This fact
would be sufficient to show that the imputations made (on
July 24) m a newspaper interview with one of our
professed Shadeans — who affirmed without having seen the
manuscript of the poem that it “consists of disjointed drafts
none of which yields a definite text'’ — is a malicious invention
on the part of those who would wish not so much to deplore
the state in which a great poet’s work w u interrupted by death
as to asperse the competence, and perhaps honesty, oi its
present editor and commentator.

Another pronouncement publicly made by Prot. lluiley
and his clique refers to a structural matter. ! quote lrom the
same interview: “None can say how long John Shade planned
bis poem to be, but it i* not improbable that what he left
represents only a small fraction ot the composition he saw in
a glass, darkly.” Nonsense again! Aside from the veritable
clarion of internal csidence ringing throughout Canto hour,
there exists Svbil Shade’s affirmation (in a document dated
July 25 ) that her husband % never intended to go be-
yond four parts.” Tor him the third canto was the penultimate
one, and thus I myself have heard him speak of it, in the
course of a sunset ramble, when, as if thinking aloud, he re-
viewed the day’s work and gesticulated m pardonable seif-
approbation while his discreet companion kept trying in vain
to adapt the swing of a long-limbed gait to the disheveled old
poet’s jerky shuffle. Nay, I shall even assert (a? our shadows
still Walk without us) that there remained to be written only
one line of the poem (namely verse 1000) which would have
been identical to line 1 and would have completed the sym-
metry of the structure, with its two identical central parts, solid
and ample, forming together with the shorter flanks twin wings
of five hundred verses each, and damn that music. Knowing
Shade’s combinational turn of mind and subtle sense of har-
monic balance, I cannot imagine that he intended to deform

Foreword

9

the faces of his crystal by meddling with its predictable growth.
And if all this were not enough — and it is, it is enough — I
have had the dramatic occasion of hearing my poor friend's
own voice proclaim on the evening of July 21 the end, or
almost the end, of his labors. (See my note to line 991.)

This batch of eighty cards was held by a rubber band which
I now religiously put back after examining for the last time
their precious contents. Another, much thinner, set of a dozen
cards, clipped together and enclosed in the same manila en-
velope as the main batch, bears some additional couplets run-
ning their brief and sometimes smudgy course among a chaos
of first drafts. As a rule. Shade destroyed drafts the moment
he ceased to need them: well do I recall seeing him from my
porch, on a brilliant morning, burning a whole stack of them
in the pale fire oi the incinerator before which be stood with
bent head like an official mourner among the winc^baroe
black butterflies of that backyard auto-da-f6 But he saved
those twelve cards because of the unused felicities shining
among the dross of used diaf tings. Perhaps, he vaguely ex-
pected to rcpl ice certain passages in the Fair Copy with some
of the lovely rejections in his files, or, more probably, a
sneaking fondness for this or that vignette, suppressed out of
atchilcctomc considerations, or because it had annoyed Mrs.
S., urged him to put off its disposal till the time when the
marble finality of an immaculate typescript would have con-
firmed it or made the most delightful variant seem cumber-
some and impure. And perhaps, let me pdd m all modesty, he
intended to ask my advice after reading bis poem to me as I
know he planned to do.

In my notes to the poem the reader will find these canceled
readings. Their places are indicated, or at least suggested, by
the draftings of established lines in their immediate neighbor-
hood. In a sense, many oi them are more valuable artistically
and historically than some of the best passages m the find
text. 1 must now explain how Pale Fire came to be edited by
me.

Immediately after my dear friend's death I prevailed on his
distraught widow to forelay and defeat the commercial pas-
sions and academic intrigues that were bound to come swirling
around her husband’s manuscript (transferred by me to a safe
spot even before his body had reached the grave) by signing
an agreement to the effect that he had turned over the manu-

10

PAtE FIRE

script to me; that I would have it published without delay,
with my commentary, by a firm of my choice; that all profits,
except the publisher’s percentage, would accrue to her; and
that on publication day the manuscript would be handed over
to the Library of Congress for permanent preservation. I defy
any serious critic to find this contract unfair. Nevertheless, it
has been called (by Shaded former lawyer) “a fantastic far-
rago of evil,” while another person (his former literary agent’)
has wondered with a sneer if Mrs. Shade’s tremulous signature
might not have been penned “in some peculiar kind of red
ink” Such hearts, such brains, would be unable to compre-
hend that one’s attachment to a masterpiece may be utterly
overwhelming, especially when it is the underside of the weave
that entrances the beholder and only begetter, whose own past
intercoils there with the fate of the innocent author.

As mentioned, I think, in my last note to the poem, the
depth charge of Shade’s death blasted such secrets and caused
so many dead fish to float up, that I was forced to leave New
Wye soon after my last interview with the jailed killer. The
writing of the commentary had to be postponed until I could
find a new incognito in quieter surroundings, but practical mat-
ters concerning the poem had to be settled at once. I took a
plane to New York, had the manuscript photographed, came
to terms with one of Shade’s publishers, and was on the point
of clinching the deal when, quite casually, in the midst of a
vast sunset (we sat in a cell of walnut and glass fifty stories
above the progression of scarabs), my interlocutor observed:
“You’ll be happy to know, Dr. Kinbote, that Professor So-
and-so [one of the members of the Shade committee] has con-
sented to act as our adviser in editing the stuff.”

Now “happy” is something extremely subjective. One of
our sillier Zemblan proverbs says: the lost glove is happy .
Promptly I refastened the catch of my briefcase and betook
myself to another publisher.

Imagine a soft, clumsy giant; imagine a historical personage
whose knowledge of money is limited to the abstract billions of
B national debt; imagine an exiled prince who is unaware of
Che Golconda in his cuff links! This is to say — oh, hyperbol-
ically— that I am the most impractical fellow in the world.
Between such a person and an old fox in the book publishing
business, relations are at first touchingly carefree and chummy/
!witfa expansive banterings and all sorts of amiable tokens. I

Foreword

11

have no reason to suppose that anything will ever happen to
prevent this initial relationship with good old Frank, my
present publisher, from remaining a permanent fixture.

Frank has acknowledged the safe return of the galleys 1
had been sent here and has asked me to mention in my Preface
— and this I willingly do — that I alone am responsible for any
mistakes in my commentary. Insert before a professional. A
professional proofreader has carefully recheckcd the printed
text of the poem against the phototype of the manuscript, and
has found a few trivial misprints 1 had missed; that has been
all in the way of outside assistance. Needless to say bow much
1 had been looking forward to Sybil Shade’s providing me with
abundant biographical data; unfortunately she left New Wye
even before I did, and is dwelling now with relatives in Que-
bec. We might have had, of course, a most fruitful correspond-
ence, but the Sfaadeans were not to be shaken oft. They headed
lor Canada in droves to pounce on the poor lady as soon as I
had lost contact with her and her changeful moods. Instead of
answering a month-old letter from my cave in Cedarn, listing
some ot m> most desperate queries, such as the real name of
“Jim Coates’' etc., site suddenly shot me a wire, requesting me
to accept Prof. H. (!) and Prof. C. (1!) as co-editors of her
husband's poem. How deep!) this surprised and pained me!
Naturally, it precluded collaboration with my friend’s inis*
guided widow.

And he wa« a ven dear triend indeed! The calendar says I
had known him only for a few months but there exist friend-
ships which develop their own inner duration, their own eons
ot transparent time, independent of rotating, malicious music.
Never shall I forget how elated I was upon learning, as men-
tioned in a note mv reader shall find, that the suburban house
(rented for my use from Judge Goldsworth who had gone on
his Sabbatical ro England) into which J moved on February 5,
stood next to rhat of the celebrated American poet whose
verses I had tried to pul into Zemblan two decades earlier!
Apart from this glamorous neighborhood, the Goldsworthian
chateau, as I was soon to discover, had little to recommend
it. The heating system was a farce, depending as it did on
registers in the floor wherefrom the tepid exhalations of a
throbbing and groaning basement furnace were transmitted to
the rooms with the faintness of a moribund’s List breath. By
occluding the apertures upstairs I attempted to give mote

PALL FIRE

energy to the register m the living room but its climate proved
to be incurably vitiated by there being nothing between it
and the arctic regions save a sleezy front door without a ves-
tige of vestibule — either because the house had been built
m midsummer by a naive settler who could not imagine the
kind of winter New Wye had in stoie for him, or because
oldtime gentility required that a chance caller at the open
door could satisfy himself from the threshold that nothing
unseemly was going on m the parlor

February and March tn Zembla (the two last of the tour
“white-nosed months,” as we call them) used to bo pretty
rough too, but even a peasant’s room there presented a solid
of uniform warmth — not a reticulation of deadly dratts Tt
ts true that, as usually happens to newcomers I was told l
had chosen the worst winter m years— and this at the latitude
of Palermo On one of my first mornings that, as l was
preparing to leave for college iu the po a eil li red car I had
just acquired, I noticed that Mr md Mr Sh ide, neither of
whom I had yet met socially (i w is to learn lata that they
assumed I wished to be left .done), were hn»ng tiouble with
their old Packard m the slippery duvtw where it emitted
whines of agony but could not o\trioatt one tortmed rear
wheel out of a concave interno of ice loan Shade busied
himself clumsily with a bucket lrom which, with the gestures
of a sower, he distributed nandluls oJ brown and over the
blue glaze He wore snowboots, his v>uina tollu was up,
his abundant grtv hair looked berimed m tn' sun 1 knew
he had been ill a few months before, and thinking to offer
my neighbors a ride to the campus in my powerful machine,
I hurried out toward them A lane uirvtng ground the slight
eminence on which my rented castle stood separated it from
my neighbors’ driveway, and I was about to cross that lane
when I lost my footing and sat down on the surpusingly hard
snow. My fall acted as a chemical reagent on the Shades’
sedan, which forthwith budged and ilmos f ran over me as
it swung into the lane with John at tne whe*l strenuously
grimacing and Svbil fiercely talking to him 1 am not sure
either saw me

A few days later, however, namely on Monday, February
16 , I was introduced to the old poet at lunch time m the
faculty club “At last presented credentials, ’ as noted, a little
ironically, m my agenda, 1 was invited to join him and four

Foreword

13

or five other eminent professors at his usual table, under an
enlarged photograph of Wordsmith College as it was, stunned
and shabby, on a remarkably gloomy summer day in 1903.

His laconic suggestion that I “try the pork” amused me. I

am a strict vegetarian, and I like to cook my own meals.

Consuming something that had been handled by a fellow

creature was, I explained to the rubicund convives, as re-
pulsive to me as eating any creature, and that would include—
lowering my voice — the pulpous pony-tailed girl student who
served us and licked her pencil. Moreover, I had already
finished the fruit brought with me in my briefcase, so I would
content myself, I said, with a bottle of good college ale. My
free and simple demeanor set everybody at ease. The usual
questions were fired a* me about eggnogs and milkshakes be-
ing or not being acceptable to one of my persuasion. Shade
said that with him it was the other way around: he must
make a definite effort to partake of a vegetable. Beginning
a salad, vias to him hkc stepping into sea water on a chilly
day, and he had always to brace himself in order tp attack
the fortress ot an apple. I was not yet used to the rather
fatiguing jesting and teasing that goes on among American
intellectuals of the inbreeding academic type and so abstained
from telling John Shade in fiont of all those grinning o(d
males how T much I admired his work lest a senous discussion
of literature degenerate into mere facctiation. Instead I asked
him about one of my newly acquired students who also at-
tended his course, a moody, delicate, rather wonderful boy;
but with a resolute shake of his hoary forelock the old poet
answered that he had ceased long ago to memorize faces and
names of students and that the only person in his poetry class
whom he could visualize was an extramural lady on crutches.
“Come, come,” said Prolessor Hurley, “do you mean, John,
you really don’t have a mental or visceral picture of that
stunning blonde in the black leotard who haunts Lit. 202?’
Shade, all his wrinkles beaming, benignly tapped Hurley on
the wrist to make him stop. Another tormentor inquired if it
was true that 1 had installed twx> ping-pong tables in my base-
ment. I asked, was it a crime? No, ne said, but why two?
“Is that a crime?” I countered, and they all laughed.

Despite a wobbly heart (see line 735), a slight limp, and
a certain curious contortion in his method of progress. Shade
had an inordinate liking for long walks, but the snow bothered

PALE *IRB

14

him, and he prefci red, in winter, to have his wife call for him
after classes with the car. A few days later, as 1 was about
to leave Parthenocissus Hall — or Main Hall (or now Shade
Hall, alas), 1 saw him waiting outside for Mrs. Shade to fetch
him. I stood beside him for a minute, on the steps of the pil-
lared porch, while pulling my gloves on, finger by finger, and
looking away, as if waiting to review a regiment : “That was
a thorough job,” commented the poet He consulted his wrist
watch. A snowflake settled upon it. “Crystal to crystal,” said
Shade. I offered to take him home in my powerful Kramler.
“Wives, Mr. Shade, arc forgetful.” He cocked his shaggy
head to look at the library clock. Across the bleak expanse
of snow-covered turt two radiant lads m colorful winter clothes
passed, laughing and sliding. Shade glanced at his w dch again
and, with a shrug, accepted my offer.

T wanted to know if he did not ramd being taken the longer
way, with a stop at Community Center wheit 1 wanted to buy
some chocolate -coated cookies and a litth caviar. He said it
was fine with him. From the ms*de of the supermarket,
through a plate-glass window, I the old chip pop into
a liquor store. When I returned wah mv purchases, he way
back in the car, reading a tabloid newspaper which I bad
thought no pi>et would d«*ign to touch A comfortable burp
told me he had a flask of brandy concealed about his warmly
coated person As we turned into the di ivew )y of his house,
we &aw Sybil pulling up m front of il I <>ot out with courteous
vivacity. She said: “Since my husband does not believe in
introducing people, let us do it oiu selves: You are Dr.
Kinbote, aren’t you 7 And l am S\bit vShade ” ihen she ad-
dressed her husband saying he might havt waited in his office
another minute: she had honked and tolled, and walked all
the way up, et cetera. I turned to go, not wishing to listen
to a marital scene, but she called me back: “Have a drink
with us,” she said, “or rather with me, because Tohn is for-
bidden to touch alct hoi.” 1 explained I could not stay long
as T was about to have a kind of little seminar at home fol-
lowed by some table tennis, with two charming identical twins
and another boy, another boy.

Henceforth 1 began seeing more and more of my celebrated
neighbor. The view irom one of my windows kept providing
me with first-rate entertainment, especially when I was on
the wait for some tardy guest. From the second story of my

Foteword

IS

house the Shades* living-room window remained clearly visible
so long as the branches of the deciduous trees between us
were still bare, and almost every evening I could see the
poet’s slippered foot gently rocking. One inferred from it that
he was sitting with a book in a low chair but one never man-
aged to glimpse more than that foot and its shadow moving
up and down to tbe secret rhythm ot menial absorption, in
the concentrated lamplight. Always at the same time the
brown morocco slipper would drop from the wool-socked foot
which continued to oscillate, with, however, a slight slacken-
ing of pace. One knew that bedtime was clo&mg in with all
its terrois, that in a few minutes the toe would prod and
woiry the slipper, and then disappear with it from my golden
field of vision traversed by the black bendlet of a branch.
And sometimes Sybil Shade would trip by with the velocity
and swinging aims ot one flouncing out m a fit of temper,
and world return a little later at a much slower g^it, having,
as it were, pardoned hei husband for his friendship with an
eccenuiw neighbor, but the uddle of her behavior was entirely
solved one night when b\ dialing their number and watching
their window at the same time I magically induced her to go
through the hasty and quite innocent motions that had puz-
zled me.

Alas, my peace of mind was soon to be shattered. The
thick venom of enw began squirting at me as soon as aca-
demic suburbia ieah/ed that John Shade valued my society
above that of all other people Yoi.r snicker. my dear Mrs. C.,
did not escape our notice as I was helping the tired old poet
to find his galoshes alter that dreary get-together party at
your house. One day I happened to enter the English litera-
ture office in quest of a magazine with the picture of the
Royal Palace m Onhava, which I wanted inv friend to see,
when I overheard a young instructor m a green velvet jacket,
whom I shall mercifully call Gerald Fmerald, carelessly say-
ing m answer to something tbe secretary had asked: “1 guess
Mr. Shade has already left with the Great Beave*.” Of course,
I am quite tall, and my brown beard is of a rather rich tint
and texture; the silly cognomen evidently applied to me, but
was not worth noticing, and after calmly talung the magazine
from a pamphlet-cluttered table, I contented myself on my
way out with pulling Gerald Emeralds bowtie loose with a
deft jerk of my fingers as I passed by him. There was also

16

PALE FIRE

the morning when Dr. Nattochdag, head of the department
to which 1 was attached, begged me in a formal voice to be
seated, then closed the door, and having regained, with a
downcast frown, his swivel chair, urged me “to he more care-
ful. 1 * In what sense, careful? A boy had complained to his
adviser. Complained of what, good I ord? That I had criti-
cized a literature course he attended (“a ridiculous survey of
ridiculous works, conducted by a ridiculous mediocrity”)*
Laughing in sheer relief, I embraced my good Neiochka, tell-
ing him I would never be naughty again I take this oppor-
tunity to salute him. He always bcha\ ed with such exquisite
courtesy toward me that I sometimes wondered if he did not
suspect what Shade suspected, and what only three people
(two trustees and the president of the college) definitely knew.

Oh, there were many such incidents. In a skit performed
by a group of drama students I was pictured as a pompous
woman hater with a German accent, constantly quoting Hem-
man and nibbling raw carrots; and a week before Shade’s
death, a certain ferocious lady at whose club 1 had refused
to speak on the subject of “The Hally Villv” (as she put it,
confusing Odin’s Hall with the title of a Finnish epic), said
to me in the middle of a grocery stoie, “You are a remark-
ably disagreeable person. 1 fail to see how Tohn and Sybil
can stand you,” and, exasperated by mv polite smile, she
added: “What’s mote, you are insane.”

But let me not pursue the tabulation of nonsense. What-
ever was thought, whatever was said, l had ray full reward
in John’s friendship. This friendship was the more precious
tor its tenderness being intentionally concealed, especially
when we were not alone, by that gruffness which stems from
what can be termed the dignity of the heart. His whole being
constituted a mask. John Shade’s physical appearance was
so little in keeping with the harmonies hiving in the man,
that one felt inclined to dismiss it as a coarse disguise or
passing fashion; for if the fashions of the Romantic Age sub-
tilized a poet’s manliness by baring his attractive neck, prun-
ing his profile 'rad reflecting a mountain lake in his oval
gaze, present-day bards, owing perhaps to better opportunities
of aging, look like gorillas or vultures. My sublime neighbor’s
face had something about it that might have appealed to the
eye, *had it been only leonine or only Iroquoiatr, but un-
fortunately, by combining the two it merely reminded one of

Foreword 17

a fleshy Hogarthian tippler of indeterminate sex. His mis-
shapen body* that gray mop of abundant hair, the yellow
nails of his pudgy fingers, the bags under his lusterless eyes,
were only intelligible if regarded as the waste products elimi-
nated from his intrinsic self by the same forces of perfection
which purified and chiseled his veise. He was his own cancel-
lation.

I have one favorite photograph of him In this color snap-
shot taken by a onetime triend ot mine, on a brilliant spring
day, Shade is seen leaning on a sturdy cane that had belonged
to his aunt Maud (see line 86). 1 am wearing a white wind*-
breaker acquired in a local sports shop and a pair of lilac
slacks hailing from Cannes. My left hand is half raised — not
to pat Shade on the shoulder as seems to be the intention,
but to remove my sunglasses which, however, it never reached
tn that life, the life of the picture; and the library book under
my right arm is a tieatise on certun Zemblan calisthedfcs in
which 1 proposed to interest that young roomer of mine wbo
^napped the picture. A week later he was to betray my trust
by taking sordid advantage of mv absence on a trip to Wash-
ington whence 1 returned to find he had been entertaining
a tiery-haircd whore from Fxton who had left her combings
and reck in all three bathrooms. Naturally, we separated at
once, and through a chink m the window curtains I sad bad
Rob standing rather pathetically, with his crew cut, and shabby
valise, and the skis I had given him, all forlorn on the road-
side, waiting for a fellow student to drive him away forever.
I can forgive everything save ticason.

We never discussed, John Shade and l, any of ray personal
misfortunes. Our ch>e friendship was on that higher, exclu-
sively intellectual level where one rest from emotional
troubles, not share them. My admiration lor bun was ior me
a sort of alpine cure. I experienced a grand sense of wonder
whenever I looked at him, especially in the presence of other
people, inferior people. This wonder was enhanced by mv
awareness of their not tecling what 1 felt, of their not seeing
what 1 saw, of their taking Shade for granted, instead of
drenching every nerve, so to speak, in the lomance of his
presence. Here he is, 1 would say to mvself, that is his head,
containing a brain of a different brand than that of the syn-
thetic jellies preserved in the skulls around him. He is look-
ing from the terrace (of Prof. CVs house on that March

18

PALE FIRE

evening) at the distant Jake I am looking at him I am wit-
nessing a unique physiological phenomenon John Shade per-
ceiving and transforming the world, taking it in and taking
it apart, re-combining its elements m the very process of
storing them up so as to produce at some unspecified date
an organic miracle, a fusion of image and music, a line of
verse. And I experienced the same thrill is when m my early
boyhood I once watched across the tea table m m> uncle’s
castle a conjurer who had just given a fantastic performance
and was now quietly consuming a vanilla icc 1 stued at his
powdered cheeks, at tne magical flower m ht> buttonhole
where it had passed through a succession of different colors
and had now become fixed as a while e irnation and espe-
cially at his marvelous fluid-look mg fingers which could if
he chose make bis spoon dissolve into a sunbeam by twid-
dling it, or turn his rhlc into a dove b tossing it up in the
air

Shade’s poem is indeed, that sudden flournh of magn *
my gray-haned friend, trv beio\ed old conjurer, pul a pack
of index cards into his hat— and shook out a pown

To this poem we now must turn My foreword h<s heen
I trust, not too skimpy Other notes, ai ringed m a running
commentary, will certainly satisfy the most voracious reader.
Although those notes, in conformity wnfa custom, come alter
the poem, the reader advised to consult them first and then
study the poem with their help, rereading them of course as
he goes through its text, and perhaps, alter having done with
the poem, consulting tnem a third time so as to complete
the picture 1 find it wise in surh cases as this to eliminate
the bother oi back-and-forth le.ifings b\ either cutting out
and clipping together the pages with the text of the thing,
or, even more simply, purchasing two copies of the same
work which can then be placed in adjacent positions on a
comfortable table — not like the shaky little affair on which
my typewriter is prec mously enthroned now, m this wretched
motor lodge, with that carrousel inside and outside my head,
miles away from New Wye. Let me state that without my
notes Shade’s text simply has no human reality at all since
the human reality of such a poem a3 his (being too skittish
and reticent for an autobiographical work), with the omis-
sion of many pithy lines carelessly rejected by him, has to
depend entirely on the reality of its author and his surround-

Foreword

19

ings, attachments and so forth, a reality that only my notes
can provide. To this 'latement my dear poet would probably
not have subscribed, but, for better oi wor^e, it is the com-
mentator who has the last woid

Charles Kinbote

Oct. 19, (edurn, Uiana

PALE FIRE

A POF M IN FOUR CANTOS

CANTO ONE

T w^ U o sn-nlow of the w w mg si Jin
Bv the false o/uk iu the window pane
1 w i< the ^niudre of isheri fluh. - nd l
Lived on flew on, in the reflected sk>

And from the inside, too, I d duplicate
M ell, mv lamp, an apple on a pi lU.

Ln^art uning the ight, 1 d let d n 1 glis
Hana ill the lumiture above ths grass,

Ard how deflgbrfu* when i fafl ot sne *
to\ci c mv glunp c sfljw» and rcacht d up oO w
v* tc i\derhjij and Ivc cxatly st nd
L pon th u i w, oi t \r f* it c*\ >al b )d r

Rwil^ihef Ilmeeuv ck! difungfl a
mu r, o v inste dy and op tjiiv.

A dull dart w h te i^nnst the t j/s p le \fute

And ubstr u 1 1 arches m the ncut r i3 item

/ nd then the gr iuu \\ and duV l ilk

As mjn aru s the viewer aeo the ' c s

And m the moi rm\ du nond of i

I \puss *imo/cnitiit \\ hose «purreu teet h ive ciosnd

Ttom left to ruhf the hi mk p »gt ot the i nd '

Reading from kit to rignt m mute s code
\ out in irrow pointing b k k n f v u
P n, at row pointing bee k \ pin « irt ici t}

foicju *ted bc'uits , sublimated grouse.

Finding your China right behind my house
W« s he in Shctloi A Hohtu c the teflow whose
Tracks pomted b ick when he rev used his shoes*

AH colors made me happy even grvy
Mj eyes were such that literati v they
look photogiaphs Whenever I d permit,

Or, with a silent shiver, order it,

Whatever in my field of vision dwelt —

23

24

PALE F IK E

An indoor scene, hickory leaves, the svelte
Stilettos of a frozen stillicide —

Was printed on my eyelids' nether side
Where it would tarry for an hour or two.

And while this lasted all I had to do
Was close my eyes to reproduce the leaves,

40 Or indoorscene, or trophies of the caves.

I cannot understand why from the lake
I could make out our front porch when Pd take
Lake Road to school, whilst now, although no tree
Has intervened, 1 look but fail to see
Even the roof. Maybe some quirk in space
Has caused a fold or furrow to displace
The fragile vista, the frame house between
Goldsworih and Wordsmith on its square of green.

I had a favorite young shagbark there
*° With ample dark jade leaves and a Mack, space,
Vermiculatcd trunk. The setting sun
Bronzed the black bark, around which, like undone
Garlands, the shadows of the foliage fell.

It is now stout and rough; it has done well.

White butterflies turn lavender as they

Pass through its shade where gently seems to sway

The phantom of my little daughter’s swing.

The house itself is much the same. One wing
We’ve had revamped. There’s a solarium. There’s
40 A picture window flanked with fancy chairs.

TV’s huge paperclip now shines instead
Of the stiff vane so often visited
By the naive, the gauzy mockingbird
Retelling ail the programs she had heard;

Switching from chippo-chippo to a clear
To-wee t to-wee; then rasping out: come here ,
Come here , come herrr V flirting her tail aloft,

Or gracefully indulging in a soft
Upward hop-flop, and instantly (to-wee/)

74 Returning to her perch — the new TV,

Pale fne

25

I was an infant when my parents died
They both were ornithologists I’ve ti
So otten to evoke them that todiv
I have a thousand parents. Sadlv they
Dissolve m fhtii own virtues and recede.

But certain word^ chance words I h< ar or read,
Such t.s * bad heart alwa)s to him refei.

And ‘ w inter oi ihi pancreas ’ to he

\ p*rtend one who collects cold n**us
80 JHete was rn\ txdioum row reserved for ta ucsht.
litre, tu ked aw i\ b) the C an sdi in m t id,

1 listened to the bu/z downstair* and ai i' ed
For evTvhed) to be dways well
Lr des * a 1 1 1 ns tie mud btr rtuv \dJe
V n 1 1 , p o *e i ' boov ^ n f Ciod.

T w i mu ht up Ih dv r biy'rr* Aunt > m J,

A pool an j p j tr v 1U1 a taste
1 oi a drill obju ^ r»tu * ^ M
\yith giolesquv l*i md o 3o m

00 S it uetd tone ir tnc neu babt cry ha mnn
V'e v. kept <rt n't Us tnvia ere de
\ »tdl hL n hvf * the pjpcrwc.it 1 1
CU ^orvi\ n» loaiij a ) igona
} ht v j rs* boot opui ik i '< In u * { M* ^

Moo wt l Muo r , Mortl), ( e kilo’n ^ nnt,
fh numnidu 1 ! * id fro" tut li\ ! Si
* tuno kit? \ <»i h-Ht \uiks )-+ f
**,i Chart* oiA thumbt nA< t\iVi.

^ >ad uied >oi i x ^n» ola n 1 found
100 Depradmg, mdit premiss uusounu
No bet rum ntt.dv a Ood but w » . I fu* '

How luliv 1 Mi u iturp glued io me
And how m> chdtiuh palate lm<\l tbottde
Halt-fish, haif-honev, of that golden pj u !

My picture book wa<* at m earl\ age
The painted parchment papering oui Cage
Mauve tings iroimd the nsoon, blood-onnge sun;
Twinned Ins, and that rare phenomenon

26

PALE FIRE

The iridule — when, beautiful and strange,

110 In a bright sky above a mountain range
One opal cloudlet in an oval form
Reflects the rainbow of a thunderstorm
Which in a distant valley has been staged —

For we are most artistically caged.

And there’s the wall of sound ; the nightly wall
Raised by a trillion crickets in the fail.
Impenetrable! Halfway up the hill
I’d pause in thrall of their delirious trill.

That’s Dr. Sutton’s light. That’s the Great Bear.
120 A thousand years ago five minutes were
Equal to forty ounces of fine sand.

Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and

Infinite aftertime: above your head

They close like giant wings, and you arc dead.

The regular vulgarian, 1 daresay.

Is happier: he secs the Milky Way
Only when making water. Then as now
I walked at my own risk: whipped by the bough.
Tripped by the stump. Asthmatic, lame and fat,
130 I never bounced a ball or swung a bat.

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By feigned remoteness in the windowpane.

I had a brain, five senses (one unique),

But otherwise 1 was a eloutish freak.

In sleeping dreams I played with other chaps
But really envied nothing — save perhaps
The miracle of a lemniscate left
Upon wet sand by nonchalantly deft
Bicycle tires.

A thread of subtle pain,

140 Tugged at by playful death, released again.

But always present, ran through me. One day.
When I’d just turned eleven, as I lay
Prone on the floor and watched a clockwork toy-
A tin wheelbarrow pushed by a tin boy —

” Bypass chair legs and stray beneath the bed.
There was a sudden sunburst in my head.

Pale Fire

27

And then black night. That blackness was sublime.
I felt distributed through space and time:

One foot upon a mountaintop, one hand
360 Undei the pebbles of a panting strand,

One ear m Italy, one eye in Spain,

In caves, my blood, and in the stars, my brain.
There were dull throbs in my Triassic, green
Optical spots m Upper Pleistocene,

And icy shiver down my Age of Slone,

And all tomorrows in my funnybone.

During one winter every afternoon
I'd sink into that momentary swoon
And then it ceased Its memory grew dim.
if»o My health improved I even learned to swim.

But like some little lad lorced by a wench
With his pure tongue her abject thirst to quench,

I was corrupted, tenihed, allured.

And though old doctor Coll pronounced me cured
wh it he n ud, v e;t mainly growing p »ras
The wonder ling *rs and the shame remains.

CANTO TWO

y

Tncre was a tine in my demented youth
When somehow 1 suspected that the truth
About >urvival alter death w as known
170 lo e\erv human being. I alone

Knew notnmg, and a gi eat conspu icy
Ot books and people hid the truth from me. s

There was the day when I began to doubt
Man's sanity . How could he live without
Knowing for sure what dawn, what dgath, what doom
Awaited consciousness beyond the tomb?

And finally there was the sleepless night
When I decided to explore and fight
The foul, the inadmissible abyss,

28

PALE FIRE

180 Devoting aJl my twisted life to this

One task Today I m sixty-one Waxwings
Are berry-pecking A cicada smgs

The little scissors I am holding are
A dazzling synthesis ot sun and star
I stand before the window and I pare
My fingernails and vaguely aware
Of certain flinching likenesses the thumb,

Our grocer’s son, the index, lean and glum
College astronomer Starover Blue,

190 Ihe middle fePow, a tall priest 1 knew,

The feminine fourth finger, an old flirt.

And little pinky clinging to her Airt

And I make mouths as 1 snip of) the thin

Strips of wb it Aunt M 'tud used to i ill seaif-shir* ”

Maud Shade was eighty when a suduu hush
Tell on her k f e We s iw the angr ) fli h
And torsion of paralysis a>saiJ
Hci noble check We mosed h r to Pirn dale.

Famed for its sanitarium There she d si*

200 In the gl issed sun and Watch the ily lh u, lit
Upon nei dre^s and then upon her wrist
Her mmd kept fading m the growing .it 4 1
She still could speak She paused, ana groped, and lound
What seemed at first a serviceable sound.

But from adjacent cells impostoss took
The place of words she needed, and be* look
Spelt imploration as she sought in vam
To reason with the monsters in her brain

What moment in the gradual decay
41 0 Does resurrection choose ? Wh it v ear > Wh it day 9
Who has the stopwatch? Who rewinds the t*pc>

Are some less lucky, or do all escape >

A syllogism other men dte i but l

Am not another , therefore I'll not d<c

Space is a swarming in the eyes, and time, #

A singing m the ears In this hive L m
Locked up Yet, if pi lor to life we had
Been able to imagine life, what mad.

Pale Fire

29

Impossible, unutterably weird,

220 Wonderful nonsense it migbt have appeared!

So why join m the vulgar laughter? Why
Scorn a hereafter none can verity
The T urk’s delight, the future lyres, the talks
With Socrates and Proust in cypress Wilks,

The seraph with his six flamingo wings,

And Flemish hells with porcupines and things?

It isn’t that we dream too wild a dieam
1 he trouble is we do not make it seem
Sufficiently unlikeH for the most
* * * We c m thmk up is a domestic ghost

How ludicrous these etforu to translate
Into one’s pn\ He tongue a public f itel
InsU \ J ut poctrv divmwly terse,

Disjointed notes. Insomnia’s mean \crse!

Life /? a new scnbbl din t l ie dark
Anonymous

I spied on ** pne s b^k,

A>* we v ere v ilkmg home the d*\ she died.

And ernpt^ cmer ild case, squat and frog-e\ed.
Hugging the trunk, and its companion piece,

2U} A gum-logged an!

That Englishman in Nice,

A proud md hipp) linguist je noun is
Lis piunts u^ah-y — mi amng that he
f cd the poor sea gulls’

T afontamc was wiong:
Dead is *hc mandible, alive the song
And so I pare my nails, and muse, and hear
Your steps upstairs, and all is right, my dear*

Sybil, throughout our high-school Jays I knew
Your loveliness, but fell m love with you
During an outing of the senior class
250 jvj ew w'ye Falls We luncheoned on damp grass.
Our teacher of geology discussed
The cataract. Its roar and rainbow dust
Made the tame park romantic. I reclined

30

PALE FIRE

In April’s haze immediately behind
Your slender back and watched your neat small head
Bend to one side. One palm with fingers spread.
Between a star of trillium and a stone.

Pressed on the turf. A little phalange bone
Kept twitching. Then you turned and offered me
280 A thimbleful of bright metallic tea.

Your profile has not changed. The glistening teeth
Biting the careful lip; the shade beneath
The eye from the long lashes; the peach down
Rimming the cheekbone; the dark silky biown
Of hair brushed up from temple and from nape;

The very naked neck; the Persian shape
Of nose and eyebrow, you have kept it all —

And on still nights we hear the waterfall.

Come and be worshiped, come and be caressed,

S70 jyfy djy-fc Vanessa, crimson-barred, im blest
My Admirable butterflyl Explain
How could you, in the gloam of Lilac 1 ane,

Have let uncouth, h^ sterical John Shade
Blubber your face, and ear and shoukkr hladu?

We have been married forty years At le ist
Four thousand times ) our pillow h is been creased
By our two heads Four hundred thousand titm s
The tall clock with the hoarse Westminster Llnmcs
Has marked our common hour. How many moie
280 Free calendars shall grace the kitchen door?

I love you when you’re standing on the lawn
Peering at something in a tree: “It’s gone.

It was so small. It might come ba.k” (all this
Voiced m a whisper softer than a kiss).

I love you when you call me to admire
A jet’s pink trail above the sunset fire.

I love you when you’re humming as you pack
A suitcase or the farcical car sack
With round-trip zipper. And I love you most
280 When with a pensive nod you greet her ghost
And hold her first toy on your palm, or look
At a postcard from her, found in a book.

She might have been you, me, or some quaint blend:
Nature chose me so as to wrench and rend
Your heart and mine. At first we’d smile and say:
“All little girls are plump” or “Jim McVey
(The family oculist) will cure that slight
Squint in no time/’ And later: “She’ll be quite
Pretty, you know”; and, trying to assuage
The swelling torment: “That’s the awkward age/*
“She should take riding lessons,” you would say
(Your eyes and mine not meeting). “She should play
Tennis, or badminton. Less starch, more fruit!

She may not be a beauty, but she’s cute.”

It was no use, no use. The prizes won
In French and history, no doubt, were fun;

At Christmas parties games were rough, no doubi.
And one shy little guest might be left out;

But Jet’s be fair: while children of her age
Were cast as elves and fairies on the stage
That \he‘d helped paint fot the school pantomime,
My gentle girl appeared as Mother Time,

A bent charwoman with slop pail and broom.

And like a tool 1 sobbed in the men’s room.

Another w inter was scrape-scooped away.

The Toothwort White haunted our woods in May.
Summer was power-mowed, and autumn, burned.
Alas, the dingy cygnet never turned
Into a wood duck. And again your voice:

“But this is prejudice! You should rejoice
That she is innocent. Why overstress
The physical? She w ant r to look a mess.

Virgins have written some resplendent books.
Lovemakmg is not everything. Good looks
Are not that indispensable!” And still
Old Pan would call from every painted hill.

And still the demons of our pity spoke:

No lips would share the lipstick of her smoke:

The telephone that rang before a ball
Every two minutes in Sorosa Hall
For her would never ring; and, with a great
Screeching of tires on gravel, to the gate

32

PALE FIRE

Out of the lacquered night, a white-scarfed beau
Would never come for her; she’d never go,

A dream of gauze and jasmine, to that dance.

We sent her, though, to a chateau in France,

And she returned in tears, with new defeats.

New miseries. On days when all the streets
Of College Town led to the game, she’d sit
840 On the library steps, and read or knit;

Mostly alone she’d be, or with that nice
Frail roommate, now a nun; and, once or twice,

With a Korean boy who took my course.

She had strange fears, strange fantasies, strange force
Of character — as when she spent three nights
Investigating certain sounds and lights
In an old barn. She twisted words: pot, top.

Spider, redips. And “powder” was “red wop.”

She called you a didactic katydid.

360 She hardly ever smiled, and when she did.

It was a sign of pain. She’d criticize
Ferociously our projects, and with eyes
Expressionless sit on her tumbled bed
Spreading her swollen feet, scratching her hcaa
With psoriatic fingernails, and moan.

Murmuring dreadful words in monotone.

She was my darling: difficult, morose —

But still my darling. You remember those
Almost unruffied evenings when we played
sec Mah-jongg, or she tried on your furs, which made
JHer almost fetching; and the mirrors smiled.

The lights were mcreilui, the shadows mild.

Sometimes I’d help her with a Latin text.

Or she’d be reading in her bedroom, next
To my fluorescent lair, and you would be
In your own study, twice removed from me,

And I would hear both voices now and then:

“Mother, what’s grimpen?” “What is what?”

“Grim Pen .* 1

Pause, and your guarded scholium. Then again:

370 “Mother, what’s chtonic?" That, too, you’d explain,
Appending: “Would you like a tangerine?”

Pale Fire

3 $

“No. Yes. And what does sempiternal mean?”

You’d hesitate. And lustily I’d roar

The answer from my desk through the closed door*

It does not matter what it was she read
(some phony modern poem that was said
In English Lit to be a document
“Engazhay and compelling’* — what this meant
Nobody cared) ; the point is that the three
a80 Chambers, then bound by you and her and me,
Now from a tryptich or a three-act play
In which portrayed events forever stay.

I think she always nursed a small mad hope.

I’d finished recently my book on Pope.

Jane Dean, my typist, offered her one day
To meet Pete Dean, a cousin. Janes fiance
Would then take all of them in his new car
A score of miles to a Hawaiian bar.

The boy was picked up at a quarter past
3»o Eight in New Wye. Sleet glazed the roads. At last
They tound the place — when suddenly Pete Dean
Clutching his brow exclaimed that he had dean
Forgotten an appointment with a chum
Who’d land in jail if he, Pete, did not come,

Et cetera. She said she understood.

After he’d gone the three young people stood
Before the azure entrance for awhile.

Puddles were neon-barred; and with a smile
She said she’d be de trop, she’d much prefer
400 Just going home. Her friends escorted her
To the bus stop and left; but she, instead
Of riding home, got off at Lochanhead.

You scrutinized your wrist: “It’s eight fifteen.

[And here time forked.] I’ll turn it on.” The screen
In its blank broth evolved a lifelike blur,

And music welled.

He took one look at her ,

And shot a death ray at well-meaning Jane *

34

PALE FIRE

A male hand traced from Florida to Maine
The curving arrows of Aeolian wars.

410 You said that later a quartet of bores.

Two writers and two critics, would debate
The Cause of Poetry on Channel 8.

A nymph came pirouetting, under white
Rotating petals, in a vernal rite
To kneel before an altar in a wood
Where various articles of tdilet stood.

I went upstairs and read a galley proof,

And heard the wind roll marbles on the roof.

“See the blind beggar dance , the cripple sing”

420 Has unmistakably the vulgar ring

Of its preposterous age. Then came your call.

My tender mockingbird, up from the hall.

I wish in time to overhear brief fame
And have a cup of tea with you: my name
Was mentioned twice, as usual just behind
(one oozy footstep) Frost.

“Sure you don’t mind?
I'll catch the Exion plane , because you know
If I don’t come by midnight with the dough — "

And then there was a kind of travelog:

430 A host narrator took us through the fog

Of a March night, where headlights from afar
Approached and grew like a dilating star.

To the green, indigo and tawny sea
Which we had visited in thirty-three.

Nine months before her birth. Now it was all
Pepper-and-salt, and hardly could recall
That first long ramble, the relentless light.

The flock of sails (one blue among the white
Clashed queerly with the sea, and two were red),
440 The man in the old blazer, crumbing bread,

The crowding gulls insufferably loud.

And one dark pigeon waddling in the crowd.

“Was that the phone?” You listened at the door.
Nothing. Picked up the program from the floor.
More headlights in the fog . There was no sense
In window-rubbing: only some white fence
And the reflector poles passed by unmasked.

Pale Fire

35

“Are we quite sure she’s acting right?” you asked*
“It's technically a blind date, of course.

450 Well, shall we try the preview of Remorse ?”

And we allowed, in all tranquillity,

The famous film to spread its charmed marquee;
The famous face flowed in, fair and inane:

The parted lips, the swimming eyes, the grain
Of beauty on the cheek, odd gallicism,

And the soft form dissolving in the prism
Of corporate desire.

“/ think ” she said,

' Til get off here ” It's only Lochanhead”

Yes , thafs okay ” Gripping the stang, she peered
460 At ghostly trees . Bus stopped . Bus disappeared.

Thunder above the Jungle. “No, not that!”

Pat Pink, our guest (antiatomic chat).

Eleven struck. You sighed. “Well, I’m afraid
There’s nothing else of interest.” You placed
Network roulette: the dial turned and trk'ed.
Commercials were beheaded. Faces flicked.

An open mouth in midsong was struck out.

An imbecile with sideburns was about
To use his gun, but you were much too quick.

470 A jovial Negro raised his trumpet, Trk.

\our ruby nng made life and laid the law.

Oh, switch it off! And as life snapped we saw
A pinhead light dwindle and die in black
Infinity.

Out of his lakeside shack
A watchman , Father Time , all gray and bent,
Emerged with his uneasy dog and went
Along the reedy bank. He came too late.

You gently yawned and stacked away your plate.

We heard the wind. We heard it rush and throw
Twigs at the windowpane. Phone ringing? No.

I helped you with the dishes. The tall clock
Kept on demolishing young root, old rock.

“Midnight,” you said. What’s midnight to the young?
And suddenly a festive blaze was flung

f

PALE EIRE

36

Across five cedar trunks, snowpatches showed.
And a patrol car on our bumpy road
Came to a crunching stop. Retake, retake!

People have thought she tried to cross the lake
At Lochan Neck where zesty skaters crossed
4W> From Exe to Wye on days of special frost.

Others supposed she might have lost her way
By turning left from Bridgeroad; and some say
She took her poor young life. X know. You know.

It was a night of thaw, a night of blow.

With great excitement in the air. Black spring
Stood just around the corner, shivering
In the wet starlight and on the wet ground.

The lake lay in the mist, its ice half drowned.

A blurry shape stepped off the reedy bank
500 Into a crackling, gulping swamp, and sank.

CANTO THREE

Vif , lifeless tree! Your great Maybe, Rabelais:
The grand potato.

I.P.H., a lay
Institute (I) of Preparation (P)

For the Hereafter (H), or If, as we
Called it — big if 1 — engaged me for one term
To speak on death (“to lecture on the Worm,”
Wrote President McAber) .

You and I,

And she, then a mere tot, moved from New Wye
To Yewshadc, in another, higher state.

«o i i ove great mountains. From the iron gate
Of the ramshackle house we rented there
One saw a snowy form, so far, so fair,

Th*t one could only fetch a sigh, as if
It might assist assimilation.

Iph

Pale Fire

37

Was a larvorium and a violet:

A grave in Reason’s early spring. And yet
It missed the gist of the whole thing; it missed
What mostly interests the preterist;

For we die every day; oblivion thrives
Not on dry thighbones but on blood-ripe lives.

And our best yesterdays are now foul piles
Of crumpled names, phone numbers and toxed files.
I’m ready to become a floweret
Or a fat fly, but never, to forget.

And 1*11 turn down eternity unless
The melancholy and the tenderness
Of mortal life; the passion and the pain;

The claret taillight of that dwindling plane
Off Hesperus; your gesture ot dismay
On running out of cigarettes; the way
You smile at dogs; the trail of silver slime
Snails leave or flagstones; this good ink, this rhyme.
This index card, this slender rubber band
Which always forms, when dropped, an ampersand,
Are found in Heaven by the newlydead
Stored in its strongholds through the years.

Instead

The Institute assumed it might be wise
Not to expect too much of paradise:

Whal if there’s nobody to say hullo
To the newcomer, no reception, no
Indoctrination? What if you are tossed
Into a boundless void, your bearings lost,

Your spirit stripped and utterly alone.

Your task unfinished, your despair unknown,

Your body just beginning to putresce,

A non-undressable m morning dress.

Your widow lying prone on a dim bed,

Herself a blur in your dissolving head!

While snubbing gods, including the big G,

560 Iph borrowed some peripheral debns
From mystic visions; and it offered tips s
(The amber spectacles for life’s eclipse)—

How not to panic when you’re made a ghost:

Sidle and slide, choose a smooth surd, and coast,

38

PALE FIRE

Meet solid bodies and glissade right through.

Or let a person circulate through you.

How to locate in blackness, with a gasp,

Terra the Fair, an orbicle of jasp.

How to keep sane in spiral types of space.
Precautions to be taken in the case
Of freak reincarnation: what to do
On suddenly discovering that you
Are now a young and vulnerable toad
Plump in the middle of a busy road.

Or a bear cub beneath a burning pine.

Or a book mite in a revived divine.

Time means succession, and succession, change:
Hence timelessness is bound to disarrange
Schedules of sentiment. We give advice
570 To widower. He has been married twice :

He meets his wives; both loved, both loving, both
Jealous of one another. Time means growth.

And growth means nothing in Elysian life.
Fondling a changeless child, the flax-haired w ife
Grieves on the brink of a remembered pond
Full of a dreamy sky. And, also blond.

But with a touch of tawnv in the shade,

Feet up, knees clasped, on a stone balustrade
The other sits and raises a moist gaze
580 Toward the blue impenetrable haze.

How to begin? Which first to kiss? What toy
To give the babe? Does that small solemn boy
Know of the head-on crash which on a wild
March night killed both the mother and the child?
And she, the second love, with instep bare
In ballerina black, why does she wear
The earrings from the other’s jewel case?

And why does she avert her fierce young face?

For as we know from dreams it is so hard
880 To speak to our dear dead! They disregard
Our apprehension, queaziness and shame —

The awful sense that they’re not quite the same.
And our school chum killed in a distant war
Is not surprised to see us at his door.

Pale Fire

39

And in a blend of jauntiness and gloom
Points at the puddles in his basement room.

But who can teach the thoughts we should roll-call
When morning finds us marching to the wall
Under the stage direction of some goon
600 Political, some uniformed baboon?

We’ll think of matters only known to us —
Empires of rhyme, Indies of calculus;

Listen to distant cocks crow, and discern
Upon the rough gray wall a rare wall tern;

And while our royal hands are being tied,

Taunt our inferiors, cheerfully deride
The dedicated imbeciles, and spit
Into their eyes just for the fun of it.

Nor can one help the exile, the old man
010 Dying in a motel, with the loud fan
Revolving in the torrid prairie night
And, from the outside, bits of colored light
Reaching his bed like dark hands from the past
Offering gems; and death is coming fast.

He suffocates and conjures in two tongues
The nebulae dilating in his lungs.

A vuench, a rift — that’s all one can foresee.
Maybe one finds le grand n4ant; maybe
Again one spirals from the tuber’s eye.

As you remarked the last time we m ent by
The Institute: “I really could not tell
The difference between this place and Hell.”

We heard cremationists guffaw and snort
At Graberraann’s denouncing the Retort
As detrimental to the birth of wraiths.

We all avoided criticizing faiths.

The great Starover Blue reviewed the role
Planets had played as landfalls of the soul.

The fate of beasts was pondered. A Chinese
630 Discanted on the etiquette at teas
With ancestors, and how far up to go,

I tore apart the fantasies of Poe,

40

PALE FIRE

And dealt with childhood memories of strange
Nacreous gleams beyond the adults’ range.

Among our auditors were a young priest
And an old Communist Iph could at least
Compete with chinches and the party line.

In later years it started to decline:

Buddhism took loot. A medium smuggled in
640 Pale jellies and a floating mandolin.

Fra Karamazov, mumbling his inept
All is allowed , into some classes crept;

And to fulfill the fish wish of the womb,

A school of Freudians headed for the tomb.

That tasteless venture helped me in a way.

I learnt what to ignore in my survey
Of death’s abyss. And when we lost our child
I knew there would be nothing: no self-styled
Spirit would touch a keyboard of dry wood
660 To rap out her pet name; no phantom would
Rise gracefully to welcome you and me
In the dark garden, near the shagbaik tree.

“What is that funny creaking — do you hear?”

“It is the shutter on the stairs, my dear.”

“If you’re not sleeping, let’s turn on the light.

I hate that wind! Let’s play some chess.” “AU right.”

“I’m sure it’s not the shutter. There— again.”

“It is a tendril fingering the pane.”

“What glided down the roof and made that thud?”
660 “It is old winter tumbling in the mud.”

“And now what shall I do? My knight is pinned.”

Who rides so late in the night and the wind?

It is the writer’s grief. It is the wild
March wind. It is the father with his child.

Later came minutes, hours, whole days at last.
Whan she’d be absent from our thoughts, so fast

Pale Fire

41

Did life, the woolly caterpillar run.

We went to Italy. Sprawled in the sun
On a white beach with other pink or brown
970 Americans. Flew back to our small town.

Found that my bunch of essays The Untamed
Seahorse was “universally acclaimed* 1
(It sold three hundred copies in one year).

Again school started, and on hillsides, where
Wound distant roads, one saw the steady stream
Of carlights ail returning to the dream
Of college education. You went on
Tra islating into French Marvell and Donne.

It was a year of Tempests: Hurricane
680 Lolita swept from Florida to Maine.

Mars glowed. Shahs married. Gloomy Russians spied.
Lang made your portrait. And one night I died.

I he Crashaw Club had paid me to discuss
Why Poetry Js Meaningful to Us.

I g.we my sermon, a dull thing but short.

As I was leaving in some haste, to thwart
The so-called “question period*’ at the end,

One of those peevish people who attend
Such talks only to say they disagree
600 Stood up and pointed with his pipe at me.

And then it happened — the attack, the trance.

Or one of my old fits. There sat by chance
A doctor in the front row. At his feet
Patty T fell. My heart had stopped to beat,

It seems, and several moments passed before
It heaved and went on trudging to a more
Conclusive destination. Give me now
Your full attention.

I can’t tell you how

I knew — but I did know that 1 had crossed
700 The border. Everything I loved was lost
But no aorta could report regret.

A sun of rubber was convulsed and set; ^

And blood-b&ck nothingness began to spin
A system of cells interlinked within
Cells interlinked within cells interlinked

42

PALB FXftB

Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct
Against the dark, a tall white fountain played.

I realized, of course, that it was made
Not of our atoms; that the sense behind
710 The scene was not our sense. In life, the mind
Of any man is quick to recognize
Natural shams, and then before his eyes
The reed becomes a bird, the knobby twig
An inchworm, and the cobra head, a big
Wickedly folded moth. But in the case
Of my white fountain what it did replace
Perceptually was something that, I tell.

Could be grasped only by whoever dwelt
In the strange world where I was a mere stray.

720 And presently I saw it melt away:

Though still unconscious. I was back on earth.

The tale I told provoked my doctor’s mirth.

He doubted very much that in the state
He found me m “one could hallucinate
Or dream in any sense. Later, perhaps.

But not during the actual collapse.

No, Mr. Shade.”

But, Doctor, I was dead!

He smiled. “Not quite: just half a shade,” he said.

However, I demurred. In mind I kept
780 Replaying the whole thing. Again I stepped

Down fiom the platform, and felt strange and hot.
And saw that chap stand up, and toppled, not
Because a heckler pointed with his pipe,

But probably because the time was ripe
For just that bump and wobble on the part
Of a limp blimp, an old unstable heart.

My vision reeked with truth. It had the tone.

The quiddity and quaintness of its own
Reality. It was. As time went on,

740 Its constant vertical in triumph shone.

Often when troubled by the outer glare
Of street and strife, inward I'd turn, and there.

Pale Fire

43

There in the background of my soul it stood*

Old Faithful! And its presence always would
Console me wonderfully. Then, one day,

I came across what seemed a twin display.

It was a story in a magazine
About a Mrs. Z. whose heart had been
Rubbed back to Hfe by a prompt surgeon’s hand.
750 She told her interviewer ot “The Land

Beyond the Veil” and the account contained
A hint of angels, and a glint of stained
Windows, and some soft music, and a choice
Of hymnal items, and her mother’s voice;

But at the end she mentioned a remote
Landscape, a hazy orchard — and I quote:
“Beyond that orchard through a kind ot smoke
l glimpsed a tall white fountain — and awoke.”

If on some nameless island Captain Schmidt
760 Sees a new animal and captures it,

And if, a little later, Captain Smith
Brings back a skm, that island is no myth.

Our fountain was a signpost and a mark
Objectively enduring m the dark,

Strong as a bone, substantial as a tooth,

And almost vulgar in its robust truthl

The article was by Jim Coates. To Jim
Forthwith l wrote. Got het addiess trom him.
Diove west three hundred miles to talk to her.

770 Arrived. Was met by an impassioned purr.

Saw that blue hair, those ireckled hands, that rapt
Orchideous air — and knew that I was trapped.

“Who’d miss the opportunity to meet
A poet so distinguished?” It was sweet
Of me to come! I desperately tried
To ask my questions. They were brushed »vde:
“Perhaps some other time,” The journalist
Still had her scnbblings. I should not insist.

She plied me with fruit cake, turning it all
780 Into an idiotic social call

44

PALE FIRE

"I can’t believe,” she said, “that it is you!

I loved your poem in the Blue Review .

That one about M on Blon. I have a niece
Who's climbed the Matterhorn* The other piece
I could not understand. 1 mean the sense*

Because, of course, the sound — But I'm so dense!”

She was. I might have persevered. I might
Have made her tell me more about the white
Fountain we both had seen “beyond the veil”

790 But if (I thought) I mentioned that detail
She’d pounce upon it as upon a fond
Affinity, a sacramental bond,

Uniting mystically her and me,

And m a jiffy our two souls would be
Brother and sister trembling on the brink
Of tender incest. “Well,” 1 said, “1 think
It’s getting late. . . .”

I also called on Coates.

He was afraid he had mislaid her notes.

He took his article trom a steel file:
soo “it's accurate. 1 have not changed her style.

There's one misprint — not that it matters much:
Mountain , not fountain . The majestic touch.”

Life Everlasting — based on a misprint!

I mused as I drove homeward: take the hint.

And stop investigating my abyss?

But all at once it dawned on me that this
Was the real point, the contrapuntal theme;

Just this: not text, but texture; not the dream
But topsy-turvical coincidence,

810 Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense.

Yes! It sufficed that I in life could find
Some kind of lmk-and-bobolink, some kind
Of correlated pattern m the game,

Plexed artistry, and something of the some
Pleasure in it as they who played it found.

It did not matter who they were. No sound.

No furtive light came from their involute
Abode, but there they were, aloof and mute.

Pale Fire

45

Playing a game of worlds, promoting pawns
m To ivory unicorns and ebon fauns;

Kindling a long life here, extinguishing
A short one there; killing a Balkan king;

Causing a chunk of ice formed on a high-
Flying airplane to plummet from the sky
And strike a farmer dead; hiding my keys.

Glasses or pipe. Coordinating these
Events and objects with remote events
And vanished objects. Making ornaments
Of accidents and possibilities.

880 Stormcoated, I strode in: Sybil, it is

My firm conviction — “Darling, shut the door.

Had a nice trip?*’ Splendid — but what is more

I have returned convinced that I can grope

My way to some — to some — “Yes, dear?” Faint hope. ^

CANTO FOUR

Now I shall spy on beauty as none has
Spied on it yet. Now I shall cry out as
None has cried out. Now I shall try what none
Has tried. Now I shall do what none has done.
And speaking of this wonderful machine:

8i0 I’m puzzled by the difference between
Two methods of composing: A , the kind
Which goes on solely in the poet’s mind,

A testing of performing words, while he
Is soaping a third time one leg, and B t
The other kind, much more decorous, when
He’s in his study writing with a pen.

In method B the hand supports the thought,
The abstract battle is concretely fought. ^
The pen stops in mid-air, then swoops to bar
850 A canceled sunset or restore a star,

And thus it physically guides the phrase
Toward faint daylight through the inky maze.

46

PALE FIRE

But method A is agony! The brain
Is soon enclosed in a steel cap of pain.

A muse in overalls directs the drill
Which grinds and which no effort of the will
Can interrupt, while the automaton
Is taking off what he has just put on
Or walking briskly to the corner store
S6 ° To buy the paper he has read before.

Why is it so? Is it, perhaps, because
In penless work there is no pea-poised pause
And one must use three hands at the same time.
Having to choose the necessary rhyme.

Hold the completed line before one’s eyes.

And keep in mind all the preceding tries?

Or is the process deeper with no desk
To prop the false and hoist the poctesque 9
For there are those mysterious moments when
870 Too weary to delete, 1 drop my pen,

1 ambulate — and by some mute command
The right word flutes and perches on my baud.

My best time is the morning; my preferred
Season, midsummer. I once overheard
Myself awakening while half of me
Still slept in bed. I tore my spirit free.

And caught up with myself — upon the lawn
Where clover leaves cupped the topaz of dawn.
And where Shade stood in nightshirt and one shoe.
880 And then I realized that this half too

Was fast asleep; both laughed and I awoke
Safe in my bed as da> its eggshell bioke,

And robins walked and stopped, and on the damp
Gemmed turf a brown shoe lav! My seciet stamp.
The Shade impress, the mystery inborn.

Mirages, miracles, midsummer morn.

Since my biographer may be too staid
Or know too little to affirm that Shade
Shaved in his bath, here goes:

“He’d fixed a sort

890 Of hmge-and-screw affair, a steel support
Running across the tub to hold in place

Pale Fire

47

The shaving minor right before his face
And with his toe renewing tap-warmth, he'd
Sit like a king there, and like Marat bleed/’

The more I weigh, the less secure my skin;

In places it’s ridiculously thin;

Thus near the mouth: the space between its wick
And my grimace, invites the wicked nick.

Or this dewlap: some day I must set free
900 The Newport Frill inveterate in me.

My Adam’s apple is a prickly pear:

Now I shall speak of evil and despair
As none has spoken. Five, six, seven, eight.

Nine strokes are not enough. Ten. I palpate
Through strawberry-and-crcam the gory mess
And find unchanged that patch of prickliness.

I have my doubts about the one-armed bloke
Who in commercials with one gliding stroke
Cleais a smooth path of flesh from ear to chin,

910 Then wipes his face and fondly tries his skin.

I’m in the class of fussy bimamsts.

As a discreet ephebe in tights assists
A female in an acrobatic dance,

My left hand helps, and holds, and shifts its stance.
Now I shall speak . . . Better than any soap
Is the sensation for which poets hope
When inspiration and its icy blaze,

The sudden image, the immediate phrase
Over the .skin a triple ripple send
920 Making the little hairs all stand on end
As in the enlarged animated scheme
Of whiskers mowed when held up by Our Cream.

Now I shall speak of evil as none has
Spoken before. I loathe such things as jazz;

The white-hosed moron torturing a black
Bull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brae;

Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools;

Music in supermarkets; swimming pools;

Brutes, bores, class-conscious Philistines, Freud, Marx,
Fake thinkers, puffed-up poets, frauds and sharks.

no

PALE FIRE

48

And while the safety blade with scrape and screak
Travels across the country of my cheek.

Cars on the highway pass, and up the steep
Incline big trucks around my jawbone creep.

And now a silent liner docks, and now
Sunglassers tour Beirut, and now I plough
Old Zembla’s fields where my gray stubble grows.

And slaves make hay between my mouth and nose,

Man's life as commentary to abstruse
*4° Unfinished poem ^ ote for further use.

Dressing in all the rooms, I rhyme and roam
Throughout the house with, in my fist, a comb
Or a shoehorn, which turns into the spoon
I eat my egg with. In the afternoon
You drive me -to the library. We dine
At half past six. And that odd muse of mine.

My versipel, is with me everywhere.

In carrel and in car, and in my chair.

And all the time, and all the time, my love,

050 You too are there, beneath the word, above
The syllable, to underscore and stress
The vital rhythm. One heard a woman’s dress
Rustle in days of yore. I’ve often caught
The sound and sense of your approaching thought.
And all' in you is youth, and you make new,

By quoting them, old things I made for you.

Dim Gulf was my first book (free verse) ; Night Rote
Came’next; then Hebe's Cup , my final float
In that damp carnival, for now I term
w Everything “Poems,” and no longer squirm.

(But this transparent thingum does require
Some moondrop title. Help me, Willi Pale Fire.)

Gently the day has passed in a sustained
Low bum of harmony. The brain is drained
And a brown ament, and the noun I meant
To usi but did not, dry on the cement.

Maybe my sensual love for the consonne

Pale Fire

49

D'appui , Echo’s fey child, is based upon
A feeling of fantastically planned,
eT0 Richly rhymed life.

I feel I understand
Existence, or at leasta imihufe part
Uf my existence, omy torough m ylut,

I nterim of comtiinauonal delight; ~

AnJ if my private universe scans right ,

S oloes me verse ofgalaxjes divine |

Wh ich I suspect is an iamfeic 'tine
rm jeasotiablly sure that we survive
And t hat my darling somewhere is alive,

As 1 a m reasonably sure that 1
980 Shall wake at sixlomorrow, on July
The twenty-second, nineteen nity-nme,

And fhat the clay "Will pfdbabTy bd flftg.

So thi* alarm Jock l et mcsef myself ,

Yawn, "and put back ;jhadeV r *: ^ms’» o n theu* shelf.

But it’s not bedtime yet The sun attnns
Old Dr Sutton’s last two window panes
The man must be — what? Eighty? bighty-two?

Was twice my age the year I married you
Where are you? In the garden I can see
900 Part of your shadow near the shagbark tree

Somewhere horseshoes are being tossed Click Clunl
(Leaning against its lamppost like a drunk )

A dark Vanessa with a crimson band
Wheels in the low sun, settles on the sand
And shows its ink blue wmgtips flecked with white
And through the flowing shade and ebbmg light
A man, unheedful of the butterfly —

Some neighbor’s gardener, I guess — goes by
Irundhng an empty barrow up the lane.

COMMENTARY

Lines 1-4: I was the shadow of the waxwing slain, etc.

the image in these opening lines evidently refers to a bird
knocking itself out, in full flight, against the outer surface of
a glass pane in which a mirrored sky, with its slightly darker
tint and slightly slower cloud, presents the illusion of con-
tinued space. We can visualize John Shade in his early boy-
hood, a physically unattractive but otherwise beautifully de-
veloped lad, experiencing his first eschatological shock, as
with incredulous fingers he picks up from the turf that com-
pact ovoid body and gazes at the wax-red streaks ornament-
ing those gray-brown wings and at the graceful tail feathers
tipped with yellow as bright as fresh paint. When in the last
year of Shade's life I had the fortune of being his neighbor in
the idyllic hills of New Wye (see Foreword), I often saw
those particular birds most convivially feeding on the chalk-
blue berries of junipers growing at the corner of his house.
(See also lines 181-182.)

My knowledge of garden Aves had been limited to those of
northern Europe but a young New Wye gardener, in whom I
was interested (see note to line 998), helped me to identify
the profiles of quite a number of tropical-looking little strangers
and their comical calls; and, naturally, every tree top plotted
its dotted line toward the ornithological work on my desk to
which I would gallop from the lawn in nomenelatorial agita-
tion. How hard I found to fit the name “robin” to the suburban
impostor, the gross fowl, with its untidy dull-red livery and
the revolting gusto it showed when consuming long, sad,
passive worms!

Incidentally, it is curious to note that a crested bird called
in Zemblan sampel (“silktail”), closely resembling a wax-
wing in shape and shade, is the model of one of the three
heraldic creatures (the other two being respectively a reindeer
proper and a merman azure, crined or) in the armorial bear-
ings of the Zemblan King, Charles the Beloved (bora 1.915),
whose glorious misfortunes I discussed so often with my
friend.

The poem was begun at the dead center of the year, a few
minutes after midnight July 1, while I played chess with a
young Iranian enrolled in our summer school; and I do not
doubt that our po& would have understood his annotator**

53

54

PALE FIRE

temptation to synchronize a certain fateful fact, the departure
from Zembla of the would-be regicide Gradus, with that date.
Actually, Gradus left Onhava on the Copenhagen plane on
July 5.

Line 12: that crystal land

Perhaps an allusion to Zembla, my dear country. After this,
in the disjointed, half -obliterated dfiaft which I am not at all
sure I have deciphered properly:

Ah, T must not iorget to say something

That my triend told me of a certain king.

Alas, he would have said a great deal more if a domestic
anti-Karlist had not controlled every line he communicated to
her! Many a time have I rebuked him in bantering fashion:
“You really should promise to use all that wonderful stuff, you
bad gray poet, you!” And we would both giggle hlc boys. But
then, alter the inspiring evening stroll, we had to part, and
grim night lifted the drawbridge between bis impregnable
fortress and my humble home.

That King’s reign (1936-1958) will be remembered bv at
least a tew discerning historians as a peaceful and elegant one.
Owing to a fluid system of judicious alliances. Mars in his time
never marred the record. Internally, until corruption, betrayal,
and Extremism penetrated it, the People’s Place (parliament)
worked in perfect harmony with the Royal Council Harmony,
indeed, was the reign’s password. The polite arts and pure
sciences flourished. Technicology, applied physics, industrial
chemistry and so forth were suffered to thrive. A small sky-
scraper of ultramarine glass were steadily rising in Onhava.
The climate seemed to be improving, "taxation bad become a
thing of beauty. The poor weye getting a little richer, and the
rich a little poorer (in accordance with what may be known
some day as Kinbote’s Law). Medical care was spreading to
the confines of the state: less and less often, on his tour of the
country, every autumn, when the rowans hung coral-heavy,
and the puddles tinkled with Muscovy glass, the friendly and
eloquent monarch would be interrupted by a pertussal “back-
draucht” in a crowd of schoolchildren. Parachuting had be-
come a popular sport. Everybody, in a word, was content-
even the political mischiefmakers who were contentedly

Commentary 55

making mischief paid by a contented Sosed (Zambia's gigantic
neighbor). But let us not pursue this tiresome subject

To return to the King: take for instance the question of
personal culture. How often is it that kings engage in some
special research? ConchoJogists among them can be counted
on the fingers of one maimed hand. The last king of Zembla
— partly under the influence of his uncle Conmal, the great
translator of Shakespeare (see notes to lines 39-40 and 962),
had become, despite frequent migraines, passionately addicted
to the study of literature. At forty, not long before the col-
lapse of his throne, he had attained such a degree of scholar-
ship that he dared accede to his venerable uncle's raucous
dying request: “Teach, Karlikl” Of course, it would have
been unseemly for a monarch to appear in the robes of learn-
ing at a university lectern and present to rosy youths Finni~
gan’s Wake as a monstrous extension of Angus MacDiarmid’s
‘‘incoherent transactions” and of Southey’s Lingo-Grande
(“Dear Stumparuniper, 1 ' etc.) or discuss the Zemblan variants,
collected in 1798 by Hodinski, of the Kongs-skugg-sio ( The
Royal Mirror)* an anonymous masterpiece of the twelfth
century. Therefore he lectured under an assumed name and in
a heavy make-up, with wig and false whiskers. All brown-
bearded, apple-cheeked, blue-eyed Zemblam look alike, and^
1 who have not shaved now for a year, resemble my disguised
king (see also note to line 894),

During these periods of teaching, Charles Xavier made it a
rule to sleep at a pied d-terre he had rented, as any scholarly
citizen would, in Coriolanus Lane: a charming, central-heated
studio with adjacent bathroom and kitchenette. One recalls
with nostalgic pleasure its light gray carpeting ?n d pearl-gray
walls (one of them graced with a solitary copy of Picasso’s
Chandelier , pot et casserole SmaUee) t a shellful of calf-hound
poets, and a virginal-looking daybed under its rug of imitation
panda fur. How far from this limpid simplicity seemed the
palace and the odious Council Chamber with its unsolvable
problems and lrightened councilors!

Line 17: And then the gradual; Line 29: go

By an extraordinary coincidence (inherent peihaps in the
contrapuntal nature of Shade’s art) our poet seems to name
here (gradual, gray) a man, whom he was to see for one fatal
moment three weeks later, but of whose existence at the time

56

PALE FIRE

(July 2) he could not have known. Jakob Gradus called him-
self variously Jack Degree or Jacques de Grey, or James de
Gray, and also appears in police records as Ravus, Raven-
stone, and d* Argus, Having a morbid affection for the ruddy
Russia of the Soviet era, he contended that the real origin of
his name should be sought in the Russian word for grape,
y inograd, to which a Latin suffix had adhered, making it
Vinogradus. His father, Martin Gradus, had been a Protes-
tant minister in Riga, but except for him and a maternal uncle
(Roman Tselovalnikov, police officer and part-time member
of the Social-Revolutionary party), the whole clan seems to
have been in the liquor business. Martin Gradus died in 1920,
and his widow moved to Strasbourg where she soon died, too.
Another Gradus, an Alsatian merchant, who oddly enough
was totally unrelated to our killer but had been a close busi-
ness friend of his kinsmen for years, adopted the boy and
raised him with his own children. It would seem that at one
time young Gradus studied pharmacology in Zurich, and at
another, traveled to misty vineyards as an itinerant wine taster.
We find him next engaging in petty subversive activities —
printing peevish pamphlets, acting as messenger for obscure
syndicalist groups, organizing strikes at glass factories, and
that sort of thing. Sometime in the forties he came to Zembla
as a brandy salesman. There he married a publican’s daugh-
ter. His connection with the Extremist party dates from its
first ugly writhings, and when the revolution broke out, his
modest organizational gifts found some appreciation in vari-
ous offices. His departure for Western Europe, with a sordid
purpose in his heart and a loaded gun in his pocket, took
place on the very day that an innocent poet in an innocent
land was beginning Canto Two of Pale Fire . We shall ac-
company Gradus in constant thought, as he makes his way
from distant dim Zembla to green Appalachia, through the
entire length of the poem, following the road of its rhythm,
riding past in a rhyme, skidding around the corner of a
run-on, breathing with the caesura, swinging down to the
foot of the page from line to line as from branch to branch,
hiding between two words (see note to line 596), reappearing
on the horizon of a new canto, steadily marching nearer in
iambic motion, crossing streets, moving up with his valise
on the escalator of the pentameter, stepping off, boarding a

Commentary 57

new tram of thought, entering the hall of a hotel, putting out
the bedlight, while Shade blots out a word, and falling asleep
as the poet lays down his pen for the night

Line 27* Sherlock Holmes

A hawk-nosed, lanky, rather Jikable private detective, the
mam character m various stones by Conm Doyle 1 have no
means to ascertain at the piesent time which of these is re-
ferred to here but suspect that cur poet simply made up this
Case of the Reversed Footprints

Li*es 34-35 Stilettos of a iroren st^licide

How persistenth our poet evokes images of winter in the
beginning of a poem which he started composing on i balmy
summer mghtl The rnuharism ot the associations is eas' to
make out (glas> leading to crystd and enstal to ice) but the
prompter behind it retains his incognito One is too nyjdcst
to suppose tint the fict that the poet and his future com-
mentator fiid md on < winter dav somehow impinges here
on the actual >ea>on In the lovely line heading this comment
the reader should nott the la*t word dictionary defines
h is ‘a succession ot drops falling from the eaves, eavesdrop,
c*i\esdrop” I lemerabtr having encountered it fer the first
time m a poem bv 7 homas Elardv The bright irosi u ds eter-
nalized the bnght tavesdiop \S e should also note the cloak-
and-dagger hint-glint m the ‘sseitc stilettos and the snadow
of rtgicidc m the rh\me

Lines W-40 Was clo^e mv eyes e(c

These lines are tepn seuted m the dralts by i variant read-
ing

3t> . . . and home wculd nMe my thieves,

40 Ihc <>un with stolen ice the moon with leases

One cannot help recalling a pa^suje m lum n of Athens
(Act IV, Scene 0 where the misanthrope talks to tV three
marauders Having no library in the des*tf f e log cabin where
1 live like Timon m his cave, I am compelled for the purpose
of quick citation to retranslate this passage into Fnghsh prose
from a Zemblan poetical version ot hmon which, 1 hope,

58

PALE FIRE

sufficiently approximates the text, or is at least faithful to its
spirit:

The sun is a thief: she lures the sea
and robs it The moon is a thief:
he steals his silvery light from the sun.

The sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon.

For a prudent appraisal ot Conmal’s translations of Shake-
speare’s works, see note to line 962.

Line 42: I could make out

By the end of May I could make out the outlines ot some
of my images in the shape his genius might give them, by
mid-June I felt sure at last that he would tecreate m a poem
the dazzling Zembla burning in my brain. 1 mesmerized him
with it, 1 saturated him with my vision, I pressed upon him,
with a drunkard's wild generosity, all that I was helpless
myself to put into verse Suicly, it would not be easy to dis-
cover in the history of poetry a similar case — that of two
men, different in origin, upbringing, thought associations, spii-
itual intonation and mental mode, one a cosmopolitan scholar,
the other a fireside poet, entering into a seciet compact ot
this kind. At length I knew be was ripe with mv Zembla,
bursting with suitable rhymes, ready to spiut at the brush
of any eyelash. I kept urging him at every opportunity to sur-
mount his habitual sloth and start writing. My little pocket
diary contains such jottings as: “Suggested to him the heioic
measure”; “retold the escape”; “offered the use of a quiet
room in my house”; “discussed making recordings ot my
voice for his use”, and finally, under date ot July 3. “poem
begun!”

Although I realize only too clearly, alas, that the result,
in its pale and diaphanous final phase, cannot be regarded
as a direct echo of my narrative (ot which, incidentally, only
a few fragments axe given in my notes — mainly to Canto
One), one can hardly doubt that the sunset glow of the story
acted as a catalytic agent upon the very process of the sus-
tained creative effervescence that enabled Shade to produce
a 1000-line poem m three weeks. There is, moreover, a symp-
tomatic family resemblance in the coloration of both poem
and story. 1 have reread, not without pleasure, my comments

Commentary 59

to his lines, and in many cases have caught myself borrowing
a kind of opalescent light from my poet’s fiery orb, and un-
consciously aping the prose style of his own critical essays.
But his widow, and his colleagues, may stop worrying and
enjoy in full the fruit of whatever advice they gave my good-
natured poet. Oh yes, the final text of the poem is entirely his.

If we discount, as I think we should, three casual allusions
to royalty (605, 822 , and 894) and the Popian ‘'Zembla” in
line 937, we may conclude that the final text of Pale Fire
has been deliberately and drastically drained of eveiy trace
of the material I contributed; but we also find that despite
the control exercised upon my poet by a domestic censor
and God knows whom else, he has given the royal fugitive
a refuge m the vaults of the variants he has preserved; for in
his draft as many as thirteen verses, superb singing verses
(given by me in note to lines 70, 79, and 130, all in Canto
One, which he obviously worked at with a greater degree of
creative freedom than be enjoyed afterwards) bear Ini spe-
cific imprint of my theme, a minute but genuine star ghost
of my discourse on Zembla and her unfortunate king.

Lines 47-48: the frame house between Goldsworth and
Wordsmith

The first name refers to the house in Dulwich Road that I
rented from Hugh Warren Goldsworth, authority on Roman
Law and distinguished judge. I never had the pleasure of
meeting mv landlord but I came to know his handwriting
almost as well as I do Shade’s. The second name denotes, of
course, Wordsmith University, In seeming to suggest a mid-
way situation between the two places, our poet is less con-
cerned with spathd exactitude than wi h a wittv exchange of
syllables invoking the two masters of the heroic couplet, be-
tween whom he embowers his own muse. Actually, the “frame
house on its square of green” was five miles west of the
Wordsmith campus but only fifty yards or so distant from
my cast windows.

In the Foreword to this work I have had occasion to say
something about the amenities of my habitation. The charm-
ing, charmingly vague lady (see note to line 691), who se-
cured it for me, sight unseen, meant well, no doubt, especially
since it was widely admired in the neighborhood for its “old-
world spaciousness and graciousness.” Actually, it was an old,

PALE FIRE

dismal, white-and-black, half-timbered house, of the type
termed wodrtaggen in my country, with carved gables, drafty
bow windows and a so-called ‘'semi-noble” porch, surmounted
by a hideous veranda. Judge Goldsworth had a wife and four
daughters. Family photographs met me in the hallway and
pursued me from room to room, and although I am sure that
Alphina (9), Betty (10), Candida (12), and Dee (14) will
soon change from horribiy cute little schoolgirl* to smart
young ladies and superior mothers, I must confess that their
pert pictures irritated me to such an extent that finally 1 gath-
ered them one by one and dumped them dll in a closet under
the gallows row of their cellophane-shrouded winter clothes.
In the study I found a large picture of their parents, with
sexes reversed, Mrs. G. resembling Malenkov, and Mr. G. a
Medusa-locked hag, and this I replaced by the leproduction
of a beloved early Picasso: earth boy leading raincloud horse.
I did not bother, though, to do much about the family books
which were also all over the house — foui sets ot different
Children’s Encyclopedias, and a stolid grown-up one that as-
cended all the way lrom shelf to shelf along a flight of stairs
to burst and appendix in the attic. Judging bv the novels in
Mrs. Goldsworth’s boudoir, her intellectual interests were
fully developed, going as they did from Amber to Zen. The
head of this alphabetic family had a library too, but this
consisted mainly of legal works and a lot ol conspicuously
lettered ledgers. All the layman could glean tor instruction
and entertainment was a morocco-bound album in which the
judge had lovingly pasted the life histories and pictures of
people he had sent to pmou or condemned to death: un-
forgettable faces of imbecile hoodlums, last smokes and last
grins, a strangler’s quite ordinary-looking hands, a self-made
widow, the close-set merciless eyes of a homicidal maniac
(somewhat resembling, I admit, the late Jacques d’ Argus),
a bright little parricide aged seven (“Now, sonny, we want
you to tell us — “), and a sad pudgy old pederast who had
blown up his blackmailer. What rather surprised me was that
be, my learned landlord, and not his “missus,” directed the
household. Not only had he left me a detailed inventory of
all such articles as cluster around a new tenant like a mob
of menacing natives, but he had taken stupendous pains to
write out on slips of paper recommendations, explanations,
injunctions and supplementary lists. Whatever I touched on

Commentary 61

the first day of my stay yielded a specimen of Goldsworthiana.
I unlocked the medicine chest in the second bathroom, and
out fluttered a message advising me that the slit tor discarded
safety blades was too full to use. 1 opened the icebox, and
it warned me with a bark that “no national specialties with
odors hard to get rid of” should be placed therein. I pulled
out the middle drawer of the desk in the study — and dis-
covered a catalogue raisonm * of its meager contents which
included an assortment of ashtrays, a damask paperknife
(described as “one ancient dagger brought by Mrs Golds*
worth’s father from the Orient”), and an o*d but unused
pucket diary optimisucally maturing there until its calendric
correspondencies came around again. Among various detailed
notices affixed to a special board in the pantry, such as plumb-
ing instructions, dissert dtions on electricity, discourse* on cac-
tuses and so forth, I tound the diet of the black cat that
came with the house:

*

Mon, V^ed, Fn: Liver

Tue, fhu, Sat: Fish

Sun. Ground meat

(All it got trom me was milk and sardines; it was a likable
little creature but after a while its movements began to grate
on my nerves and 1 farmed it out to Mrs Finley, the cleaning
woman ) But perhaps the funniest note concerned the ma-
nipulations ot the window curtains which had to bo drawn
in different ways at diffeier* hours to prevent the sun from
getting at the upholstery. A description of the position of
the sun, daily and seasonal, was given for the several win-
dows, and if I had heeded all this I would have been kept
as busy as a participant in a regatta. A footnote, however,
generously suggested thaL instead of manning the curtains, 1
might prefer to shift and reshift out of sun range the more
precious pieces ot furniture (two embroidered armchairs and
a heavy “royal console”) but should do it c ruefully lest I
scratch the wall moldings. 1 cannot, alas, repr^vduce the me-
ticulous schedule of these transposals lor seem to recall that
I was supposed to castle the long way before going to bed
and the short way first thing in the morning. My dear Shade
roared with laughter when I led him on a tour of inspection
and had him find some of those bunny eggs for himself.

62

PALE PIKE

Thank God, his robust hilarity dissipated the atmosphere of
damnum infectum in which I was supposed to dwell. On his
part, he regaled me with a number of anecdotes concerning
the judge's dry wit and courtroom mannerisms; most of these
anecdotes were doubtless folklore exaggerations, a few were
evident inventions, and all were harmless. He did not bring
up, my sweet old friend never did, ridiculous stories about
the terrifying shadows tha* Judge Goldsworth’s gown threw
across the underworld, or about this or that beast lymg in
prison and positively dying of raghdirvt (thirst for revenge) —
crass banalities circulated by the scurrilous and the heartless —
by all those for whom romance, remoteness, sealskin- lined
scarlet skies, the darkening dunes of a fabulous kingdom,
simply do not exist But enough of this. Let us turn to our
poet’s windows 1 have no desire to twist and batter an un-
ambiguous apparatus criticus into the monstrous semblance of
a novel

Today it would be impossible for me to describe Shade's
house m terms or architecture or indeed in an> term other
than those of peeps and glimpses, aud window-framed op-
portunities As previously mentioned (see foreword), the
coming of summer presented a problem m optics, the en-
croaching foliage d«d not always see e>e to eve with me* it
confused a green monocle with an opaque occludcnt, and the
idea of protection with that of obstruction. Meanwhile (on
July 3 according to my agenda) I had learned — not from
John but from Sybil — that my friend had started to work on
a Jong poem After not having seen him for a couple ol days,
I happened to be bringing him some third-class mail from
his box on the road, adjacent to Goldswoith’s (which 1 used
to ignore, crammed as it was with leaflets, local advertise-
ments, commercial catalogues, and that kind of trash) and
ran into Sybil whom a shrub had screened fiom my falcon
eye. Straw-hatted and garden gloved, she was squatting on
her hams in front of a flower bed and pruning or tying up
something, and her close-fitting brown trousers reminded me
of the mandolin tights (as 1 jokingly called them) that my
own wife used to wear. She said not to bother him with those
ads and added the information about his having “begun a
really big poem.” I lelt the blood rush to my face and mum-
bled something about his not having shown any of it to me
yet, and she straightened herself, and swept the black and

Commentary 63

gray hair off her forehead, and stared at me, and said:
“What do you mean — shown any of it? He never shows any-
thing unfinished Never, never He will not even discuss it
with you until it is quite, quite finished ” I could not believe
it, but soon discovered on talking to my strangely reticent
friend that he had been well coached by his lady When I
endeavored to draw him out by means of good-natured sallies
such as : “People who live in glass houses should not write
poems ” he would only yawn and shake his head, and retort
that “foreigners ought to keep away from old saws ” Never-
theless the urge to find out what he was doing with all the
live, glamorous, palpitating, shimmering material I had lav-
ished upon him, the itching desire to see him at work (even
if the fruit of his work was denied me), proved to be utterly
agonizing and uncontrollable and led me to indulge m an orgy
of spying which no considerations of pride could stop

Windows, as well known, have been the solace o£ first-
person literature throughout the ages But this observer never
could emulate m shcei luck the eavesdropping Hero of Our
Jure or the omnipresent one of Time Lost \et J was granted
now and then scraps of happy hunting When my casement
window ceased to function because of an elm’s gioss growth,
I found, at the end of the veranda, an ivied corner from
which I could view rather ampl) the lront ol the poet’s house.
If L wanted to see its south side I could go down to the back
of my garage and look from behind a tulip tree across the
curving downhill road at several piecious bright windows,
tor he never pulled down U shades (she did) If I veamed
for the opposite side, all I had to do wis walk uphill to the
top of my garden wheie my bodyguard of black jumpers
watched the stars, and the omens, ano the patch of pale light
under the lone streetlamp on the road below By the onset
of the season here conjured up, I had sui mounted the very
special and very private fears that are discussed elsewhere
(see note to line 62 ) and rather enjoyed following m the
dark a weedy and rocky easterly projection of my grounds
ending m a locust giove on a slightly higher level than die
north side of the poet’s house.

Once, three decades ago, in my tender and temble boy-
hood, I had the occasion of seeing a man m the act of making
contact with God. I had wandered into the so-called Rose
Court at the back of the Ducal Chapel in my native Onhava,

PALE FIRE

during an interval in hymnal practice. As I mooned there,
lifting and cooling my bare calves by turns against a smooth
column, I could hear the distant sweet voices interblending
in subdued boyish merriment which some chance grudge,
some jealous annoyance with one particular lad, prevented
me from joining, rhe sound of rapid steps made me raise
my morose gaze from the sectile mosaic of the court — real-
istic rose petals cut out of xodstein and large, almost palpable
tborns cut out of green maible. Into these roses and thorns
there walked a black shadow: a tall, pale, long-nosed, dark-
haired young minister whom 1 had seen around once or twice
strode out of the vestry and without seeing me stopped in the
middle of the court. Guilty disgust contorted his thin lips.
He wore spectacles. His clenched hands seemed to be grip-
ping invisible prison bars. But there is no bound to the meas-
ure of grace which man may be able to receive. All at once
his look changed to one of rapture and reverence. I had
never seen such a blaze of bliss before but was to perceive
something of that splendor, of that spiritual energy and di-
vine vision, now, in another land, reflected upon the nigged
and homely face of old John Shade. How gUd I was that the
vigils I had kept all through the spung had prepared me
to observe him at his miraculous midsummer task* I had
learned exactly when and where to find the best points from
which to follow the contours of his inspiration My binocu-
lars would seek him out and focus upon him from afar m
his various places of labor: at night, in the violet glow of
his upstairs study where a kindly mirroi reflected for me his
hunched-up shoulders and the pencil with which he kept
picking his ear (inspecting now and then the lead, and even
tasting it); in the forenoon, lurking tn the ruptured shadows
of his first-floor study where a bright goblet ot liquor quietly
traveled from filing cabinet to lectern, and fiom lectern to
bookshelf, there to hide it need be behind Dante’s bust; on
a hot day, among the vines of a small arborlike portico,
through the garlands of which I could glimpse a stretch of
oilcloth, his elbow upon it, and the plump cherubic fist prop-
ping and crimpiing his temple. Incidents of perspective and
lighting, intertcience by iramework or leaves, usually de-
prived me of a clear view of his face; and perhaps nature
arranged it that way so as to conceal from a possible predator
the mysteries of generation; but sometimes when the poet

Commentary 65

paced back, and forth across his lawn, or sat down for a
moment on the bench at the end of it, or paused under his
favorite hickor) tree I could distinguish the expression of
passionate interest, rapture ind reverence, with which he fol-
lowed the images wording themselves in his mind, and I knew
that whatever mv agnostic friend might say in dental, at that
moment Our I ord was with him

On certain nights, when Ions; be lore its inhabitants’ usual
bedtime the home would be dark on the three sides I could
survey fiom mv three \ mtige points, th it very darkness kept
tching me they were at home Their car stood ne n its garage —
but 1 could not ncli \c thev hid gone out on toot, since
in th it c in they would hue lett the oorcb hgnt turned
on l iter considerations me* deductions have pusuaded me
th it thw m & ht of greai need on wH 1v ,h i decided to check the
matter was Tul) 11 the ditc of Sh dc s completing his Sec-
ond Canto li was a hot black bhxtv v nuhl I stole through
He irubhciv to the mi ot li ir house \t first f thought
that thu toutn mvk v is i)so d*rk thus clinching the matter,
and hiu Unit to txpr nc ice i queer s is*. ot relief before
noiicing t font squire of hplit u i !er the window of i little
nai k p \rloi where f hid nevti ban h was wi ic open A tall
lamp with a ptuhmtmhke lndt iliuminitcd the bottom of
the xoon where 1 eould see S\bn md John, hu on the edge
of a dn an, sidisiddle with her b lek to me, and him on a
hassotk netr toe divan upon which he seemed to be slowly
colhct» i„» md sticking scattered playing cirds Icit after a
giuic of pihcrue Sx bil wis ’tei ntoclv huddle-shaking and
blowing her r o>t Fohri s tM w i ill blotchy and wet Not
bttng aw ir it tne tune of the t\ ct ty pc ot Wilting paper
tnv friend used 1 could not help ve denng wiut on earth
could hi so tt u-piovoki g ibout the nitcome ot a game of
i aids V 1 '•ti untd to sec better st mdui*, up to my knees m
d hornbly cl istic box hul^c 1 dislodged the sonoious lid of
a garbige can This of coujsc nuqnt hive been mistaken for
the work ot the wind, ind Svbil hued the \ nd She it once
left her per^h dosed the window with a gicat buig, and
pulled do vn its strident blind

I crept hack to my cheukss domic n*. with a heavv heart
and l puzzled mind lhe hem rem lined heavy but the puz-
zle was solved a few d m 1 iter very prob ibh on St Swithm's
Day, for I find mny little diary under that date the anticipa-

66

PALE FIRE

tory “promnad vespert mid J.S . /’ crossed out with a petu-
lance that broke the lead in midstroke* Having waited and
waited for my friend to join me in the lane, until the red of
the sunset had turned to the ashes of dusk, 1 walked over to
his front door, hesitated, assessed the gloom and the silence,
and started to walk around the house. This time not a glint
came from the hack parlor, but by the bright prosaic light in
the kitchen I distinguished one end of a whitewashed table
and Sybil sitting at it with so rapt a look on her face that one
might have supposed she had just thought up a new recipe.
The back door was ajar, and as I tapped it open and launched
upon some gay airy phrase, T realized that Shade, sitting at
the other end of the table, was in the act of reading to her
something that I guessed to be a part of his poem. They
both started. An unprintable oath escaped from him and he
slapped down on the table the stack of index cards he had in
his hand. Later he was to attribute this temperamental out-
burst to his having mistaken, with his reading glasses on, a
welcome friend for an intruding salesman; but I must sav it
shocked me, it shocked me greatly, and imposed me at the
time to read a hideous meaning into everything that followed.
“Well, sit down,” said Sybil, “and have some coffee” (victors
are generous). I accepted, as I wanted to see if the recitation
tvould be continued m my presence. It was not ‘I thought,' 1
I said to nty friend, “you were coming out with me for a
stroll.” He excused himself saying he felt out of sorts, and
continued to dean the bowl of his pipe as fiercely as if it were
my heart he was hollowing out.

Not only did I understand then that Shade regularly read
to Sybil cumulative parts of his poem but it also dawns upon
me now that, just as regularly, she made him tone down or
remove from his Lair Copy everything connected with the
magnificent Zemblan theme with which 1 kept furnishing him
and which, without knowing much about the growing work,
I fondly believed would become the main rich thread in its
weave!

Higher up on the same wooded hill stood, and still stands
I trust, Dr. Sutton’s old clapboard house and, at the very top,
eternity shall not dislodge Professor C.’s ultramodern villa
from whose terrace one can glimpse to the south the larger
and sadder of the three conjoined lakes called Omega, Ozero,

Commentary 67

and Zero (Indian names garbled by early settlers in such a
way as to accommodate specious derivations and common-
place allusions) On the northern side of the hill Dulwich
ROw.d joins the highway leading to Wordsmith University to
which I shall devote here only a few words partly because
all kinds ot descriptive booklets should be available to the
reader by writing to the Umveisitv’s Publicity Office, but
mainly because f wish to convey, m making this reference to
WorJsmith bneter than the notes on the Goldsworth and
Sb ide houses, the fact that the college was considerably far-
ther from them than they were from one another. It is prob-
ably the fiisl time that the dull pain of distance is rendered
through an effort of stUe and that a topographical idea finds
its verbal espression in a senes of torc^bortened sentences.

After winding lor about tour miles in a general eastern
diuctioii dirough a h*\uiiudlly spi ned and h ligated residen-
tial section with wnously gvded la\sn> slopmg down on both
Nidts ihc l mduv i\ biiuiidns one branch eoes left to New
'Vvc and its expectant auheld the other continues to the
.ampus Here die the g»eat mansions of nudness, the im-
pede iblv planned dormitories- -bedlam* ot jungle music —
the magnificent p\iace of the Administration, the brick walls,
the tiTchwavv the quadrmglcs blocked out in velvet green
ird cmysoprase. Spent et House and its lily pond, the Chapel,
New r ectuie H \W the f lbraiy, the pnsonlike edifice con-
taining our dassioonis and office*- rio be called from now
on Shade Hall), the furious *ve»oi of ah the frees men-
tioned hv Shake >pcure. a distant droning sound, the hint of a
hu/c, the tiii\)UOisc dome of the Obscrvdoiv, wisps and pale
plumes of amis, and the pot>lar -cm taint d Rom m-tieied foot-
ball field, desuted on summer days except to r a dicamv-eyed
} oungster flying— on a long control line in a d*onmg circle —
a motor-powered model plane

Dear testis, do -.omething

Line 49 shagbark

A hickojy. Our poet shared with the Lnglish masters the
noble knack of transplanting tiecs into verse with their sap
and shade. Many years ago Disa, our King’s Queen, whose
favorite trees were the jacar.inda wd the maidenhair, copied
out in her album a quatrain from John Shade’s collection ot

68

PALE FIRE

short poems Hebe's Cup , which I cannot refrain from quot-
ing here (from a letter I received on April 6, 1959, from
southern France) :

The Sacred Tree

The ginkgo leaf, in golden hue, when shed,

A muscat grape,

Is an old-fashions d butterfly, ill-spread,

In shape.

When the new Episcopal church in New Wye (see note to
line 549) was built, the bulldozers spared an arc of those
sacred trees planted by a landscaper of genius (Repburg) at
the end of the so-called Shakespeare Avenue, on the campus.
1 do not know if it is relevant or not but there is a cat-and-
mouse game in the second line, and “tree” in Zemblan is
grados.

Line 57: The phantom of my little daughter’s swing

Alter this Shade crossed out lightly the following lines in the
draft:

The light is good; the reading lamps, long-necked;

All doors have keys Your modern architect
Is in collusion with psychanalysts:

When planning parents’ bedrooms, he insists
On lockless doors so that, when looking back,

The future patient of the future quack
May find, all set for him, the Primal Scene.

Line 61: TV’s huge papeiclip

In the otherwise empt), and pretty fatuous, obituary men-
tioned in my notes to lines 71-72, there happens to be quoted
a manuscript poem (received from Sybil Shade) which is said
to have been “composed by our poet apparently at the end
of June, thus less than a month before our poet’s death, thus
being the last short piece that our poet wiote.”

Here it is:

The Swing

The setting sun that lights the tips
Of TV's giant paperclips
Upon the roof;

Commentary 69

Th* shadow of the doorknob that
At sundown is a baseball bat
Upon the door.

The cardin il th it likes to sit
And make chip-vut, chip- wit, chip-wit
Upon the tree,

The empty little swing that sw mgs
Under the tree these aie the things
I hat break mv heart

I leave my poet’s rcider to decide wiicther it is likely he
would hive written this only a tew d-iys belore he lepcated
its inmiatuic themes m this p'vrt of the poem I suspect it to
bi a much carhei dfori (it has no year subscript but should
he dated soon liter his daughlei s dcitld which Shad#' dug
out from among his old pipers to see wfnt he could use for
Pah f ie (tut poem our nccrolgist does not know)

l im (2 often

Often, almost mghth, lluoughout the spnng of 1959, I had
fured for my life Solitude is the piaytield ol Sat«n I can-
not describe the depths of my loneliness and distress There
was natunlly my furous neighbor just aeioss the lane, and
at one time I took in a dissipated voung roomer (who gen-
erally came home long after midnight) Yet 1 wish to stress
that cold hard core of loneliness which is not good for a
displaced soul F\Ci)bodv knows how given to regicide Zcm-
blans are two Queens, thret. Kings and lourtcen Pretenders
died violent deaths, strangled, stabbed poisoncJ, and drowned,
m the course of only one century il ’Oft- 1800) The Golds-
worth castle became particularly solitary aftei that turning
point at dusk which resembles so much the nightfall of the
mind Stealthy rustles, the footsteps of vesteryear leaves, an
idle breeze, a dog touring the garbage cans —everything
sounded to me like a bloodthirsty prowler I kept moving
from window to window, my silk nightcap drenched with
sweat, my bared breast a thawing pond, and sometimes,
armed with the judge’s shotgun, I dared beard the terrors of
the terrace 1 suppose it was then, on those masquerading
spnng nights with the sounds of new life m the tiees cruelly

70

PALP FIRE

mimicking the cracklings of old death m my brain, I suppose
it was then, on those dreadful nights, that i got used to con-
sulting the windows ol my neighbor s house in the hope for
a gleam of comfort (see notes to lines 47-48) What would
I not have given for the poets suffering another heart
attack (see line 691 and note) leading to my being called
over to their house, all windows ablaze, in the middle ot the
night, m a great warm burv of sympathy, coflee, telephone
calls, Zemblan herbal receipts (they work wonders 1 ), and a
resurrected Shade weeping m my arms (“There, there, Tohn”)
But on those March nights their house was is black as a
coffin And when physical exhaustion \n d the sepulchral cold
drove me at last upstairs to my solitary double bed, I would
he awake and breathless — as it only now living consciously
through those perilous rights m my country, where at any
moment, a company of jittery revolutionists might entei and
hustle me off to l moonlit wall Ihe sound ot a rapid cai
or a groaning truck would come a> a strange mixture of
friendly lites relief md deaths feiriul siudow would thai
shadow pull up at my doo r ? Were those phtntom fluids com-
ing for me? Would thf*v shoot me at one*. oi would they
smuggle the chloroformed scholir bick to / mbla Rodiiiya
Zembla, to face there * dazzling dt canter nd a row of ludges
exulting in their inquisitorial chairs'?

At times I thought that only by self-destruction could I
hope to cheat the relentlessly advancing issas^ins who weie
in me, m my eardiums, in my pulse, m my skull, rather than
on that constant highway looping up over me and around my
heart as I dozed off only to ha\e my deep shattered by that
drunken, impossible, uniorgettable Bobs return to Candida’s
or Dee’s former bed As briefly mentioned n the torewoid,
I finally threw him out, after which for sestrai nights neither
wine, nor music, nor praver could allay my fears On the
other hand, those mellowing spring days weic quite sufferable,
my lectures pleased everybody, and I made it a point ot at-
tending all the social functions available to me But after the
gay evening there came again the insidious approach, the ob-
lique shuffle, that creeping up, and that pause, and the resumed
crepitation.

The Goldsworth chateau had many outside doors, and no
matter how thoroughly I inspected them and the window
shutters downstairs at bedtime, I never failed to discovei next

Commentary 71

morning something unlocked, unlatched, a little loose, a little
ajar, something sly and suspicious-looking. One night the
black cat, which a few minutes before 1 had seen rippling
down into the basement where 1 had arranged toilet facilities
for it in an attractive setting, suddenly reappeared on the
threshold of the music room, in the middle of my insomnia
and a Wagner record, arching its back and sporting a neck
bow of white silk which it could certainly never have put
on all by itself. I telephoned 11111 and a few minutes later
was discussing possible culprits with a policeman who rel-
ish* d greatly my cherry cordial, but whoever had broken
m had left no trace. It is so easy for a cruel person to make
the victim of his ingenuity believe that he has persecution
mania, or is really being stalked by a killer, or is suffering
from hallucinations. Hallucinations! Well did I know that
among certain youthful instructors whose advances I had re-
jected there was at least one evil practical joker; l knew it
ever since the rime I tame home from a very enjoyable and
successful meeting of students and teachers (at which I had
exuberantly thrown off my coat and shown several willing
pupils a few of the amusing holds employed by Zemblan
wrestler^) and found in my coat pocket a brutal anonymous
note saying; “You have hal s real bad, chum,” mean-

ing evideotally “hallucinations/’ although a malevolent critic
might infer from the insufficient number of dashes that little
Mr. Anon, despite teaching Freshman English, could hardly
spell

1 am happy to report that soon after Easter my fears dis-
appeared never to return. Into Alphmas or Betty’s room
another lodger moved, Balthasar, Prince of Loam, as I dubbed
him, who with elemental regularity fell asleep at nine and
by six in the morning was planting heliotropes ( Hehotropium
turgenevi). This is the flower whose odor evokes with time-
less intensity the dusk, and the garden bench, and a house
of painted wood in a distant northern land.

Line 70' The new TV

After this, in the draft (dated July 3), come a few un-
numbered lines that may have been intended for some later
parts of the poem. They are not actually deleted but arc ac-
companied by a question mark in the margin and encircled
with a wavy hne encroaching upon some of the letters:

72

PALE FIRE

There are events, strange happenings, that strike
The mind as emblematic. They are like
Lost similes adrift without a string,

Attached to nothing. Thus that northern king,

Whose desperate escape from prison was
Brought off successfully only because
Some forty of his followers that night
Impersonated him and aped his flight —

He never would have reached the western coast had not
a fad spread among his secret supporters, romantic, heroic
daredevils, of impersonating the fleeing king They rigged
themselves out to look like him in red sweaters and red caps,
and popped up here and there, completely bewildering the
revolutionary police. Some of the pranksters weie much
younger than the King, but this did not matter since his pic-
tures in the huts of mountain folks and m the myopic shops
of hamlets, where you could buy worms, ginger biead and
zhiletka blades, had not aged since his coronation. A charm-
ing cartoon touch w f as added on the famous occasion when
from the terrace of the Kronbhk Hotel, whose chairlift takes
tourists to the Kron glacier, one merry mime was seen float-
ing up, like a red moth, with a hapless, and capless, police-
man riding two seats behind him in dream-slow pursuit. It
gives one pleasure to add that before reaching the staging
point, the false king managed to escape by climbing down
one of the pvlons that supported the traction cable (see also
notes to lines 149 and 171).

Line 71: parents

With commendable alacrity, Professor Hurley produced
an Appreciation of John Shade’s published works within a
month after the poet’s death. It came out m a skimpy literary
review, whose name momentarily escapes me, and was shown
to me in Chicago where I interrupted for a couple of days my
automobile journey from New Wye to Cedarn, in these grim
autumnal mountains.

A Commentary where placid scolarship should reign is not
the place for blasting ihe preposterous defects of that little
obituary. I have only mentioned it because that is where I
gleaned a few meager details concerning the poet’s parents.
His father, Samuel Shade, who died at fifty, in 1902, had

Commentary 73

studied medicine m his youth and was vice-president of a
firm ot surgical instruments in Exton. His chief passion, how-
ever, was what our eloquent necrologist calls “the study of
the feathered tribe,” adding that “a bird had been named
for him: Bomby cilia Shader (this should be “shadei,” of
course). The poet's mother, nee Caroline Lukin, assisted him
in his work and drew the admirable figures of his Birds of
Mexico , which I remember having seen in my friend's house.
What the obituarist does not know is that Lukin comes from
Luke, as also do Locock and Luxon and Lukashevich. It
repiesents one of the many instances when the amorphous-
looking but live and personal hereditary patronymic grows,
sometimes in fantastic shapes, around the common pebble of
a Cliristian name. The I ukins are an old Essex family. Other
names derive from professions such as Rymer, Scrivener,
Limner (one who illuminates parchments), Botkin (one who
makes bottekins, lancy footwear) and thousands of otters.
My tutor, a Scotsmar. used to call any old tumble-down
building “a hurley-house." But enough of this.

A few other items concerning John Shade’s university
studies and the middle years of his singularly uneventful life
can be looked up by his reader in the professor's article. It
would have been on the whole a dull piece had it not been
enlivened, if that is the term, by certain special features.
Thus, there is only one allusion to my friend’s masterpiece
(the neatly stacked batches of which, as I write this, lie in
the sun on my table as so many ingots of fabulous metal) and
this 1 transcribe with morbid delight: “Just before our poet’s
untimely death he seems to have been working on an auto-
biographical poem.” The circumstances of this death are com-
pletely distorted by the professor, a fateful follower of the
gentlemen of the daily press who — perhaps Cor political rea-
sons — had falsified the culprit’s motives and intentions with-
out awaiting his trial — which unfortunately was not to take
place in this world (see eventually my ultimate note). But,
of course, the most striking characteristic of the little obituary
is that it contains not one reference to the glorious friendship
that brightened the last months of John’s life.

My friend could not evoke the image of his father. Simi-
larly the King, who also was not quite three when his father,
King Alfin, died, was unable to recall his face, although oddly
he did remember perfectly well the little monoplane ot choco-

74

PALE FIRE

late that he, a chubby babe, happened to be holding in that
very last photograph (Christmas 1918) of the melancholy,
riding-breeched aviator in whose lap he reluctanly and un-
comfortably sprawled.

Alfin the Vague (1873-1918; regnal dates 1900-1918, but
1900-1919 in most biographical dictionaries, a fumble due
to the coincident calendar change from Old Style to New)
was given his cognomen b) Amphitheatncus, a not unkindly
writer of fugitive poetry in the liberal gazettes (who was
also responsible lor dubbing my capital Uranogradl). King
Alfin’s absent-mindedness knew no bounds. He was a wretched
linguist having at his disposal only a few phrases of French
and Danish, but every time he had to make a speech to his
subjects — to a group of gaping Zemblan yokels in some re-
mote valley where he had crash-hnded — some uncontrollable
switch went into action in his mind, and he reverted to those
phrases, flavoring them for topical sense with a little Latin.
Most ot the anecdotes relating to his naive fits of abstrac-
tion are too silly and indecent to sully these pages; but one of
them that I do not thank especially funny induced such guf-
faws from Shade (and returned to me, via the Common
Room, with such obscene accretions) that I feel inclined to
give it here as a sample (and as a corrective). One summer
before the first world w lr, when the emperor of a great for-
eign realm (I realize how few there arc to choose from) was
paying an extremely uuusual and flattering visit to our little
hard country, my father took him and a young Zemblan in-
terpreter (whose sex I leave open) in a newlv purchased
custom-built car on a jaunt in the countryside. As usual,
King Alfin traveled without a vestige of escort, and this, and
his brisk driving, seemed to trouble his guest. On their way
back, some twenty miles from Onhava, King Alfin decided
to stop for repairs. While he tinkered with the motor, the
emperor and the interpreter sought the shade of some pines
by the highway, and only when King Alfin was back in
Onhava, did he gradually realize from a reiteration of rather
frantic questions that he had left somebody behind (“What
emperor?” has remained his only memorable mot). Generally
speaking, in respect of any of my contributions (or what 1
thought to be contributions) I repeatedly enjoined my poet
to record them in writing, by all means, but not to spread
then! in idle speech; even poets, however, are human.

Commentary 75

King Alfin’s absent-mindedness was strangely combined
with a passion for mechanical things, especially for flying
apparatuses. In 1912, he managed to rise in an umbrella-like
Fabre “hydroplane” and almost got drowned in the sea be-
tween Nitra and Indra. He smashed two Farmans, three Zem-
blan machines, and a beloved Santos Dumont Demoiselle * A
very special monoplane, Blenda IV, was built for him in 1916
by his constant “aerial adjutant,” Colonel Peter Gusev (later
a pioneer parachutist and, at seventy, one of the greatest
jumpers of all time), and this was his bird of doom. On the
serene, and not too cold, December morning that the angels
chose to net his mild pure soul, King Alfin was in the act of
trying solo a tricky vertical loop that Prince Andrey Kachurin,
the famous Russian stuater and War One hero, had shown
him in Gatchina. Something went wrong, and the little Blenda
was seen to go into an uncontrolled dive. Behind and ^bove
him, in a Caudron biplane. Colonel Gusev (by then Duke
of Rahl) and the Queen snapped several pictures of what
seemed at first a noble and graceful evolution but then turned
into something else. At the last moment, King Alfin managed
to straighten out his machine and was again master of gravity
when, immediately afterwards, he flew smack into the scaf-
folding of a huge hotel which was being constructed in the mid-
dle of a coastal heath as if for the special purpose of standing
in a king’s way. This uncompleted and badly gutted building
was ordered razed by Queen Blenda who had it replaced by a
tasteless monument of granite surmounted by an improbable
type of aircraft made ot bronze. The glossy prints of the en-
larged photographs depicting the entire catastrophe were dis-
covered one day by eight-year-old Charles Xavier in the drawer
of a secretary bookcase. In some of these ghastly pictures one
could make out the shoulders and leathern casque of the
strangely unconcerned aviator, and in the penultimate one of
the series, just before the white-blurred shattering crash, one
distinctly saw him raise one arm in triumph and reassurance.
The boy had hideous dreams after that but his mother never
found out that he had seen those mfernaljrecords.

Her he remembered — more or less: a horsewoman, tall,
broad, stout, ruddy-faced. She had been assured by a royal
cousin that her son would be safe and happy under the tute-
lage of admirable Mr. Campbell who had taught several dutiful
little princesses to spread butterflies and enjoy Lord Ronald's

76

PALE FIRE

Coronach . He had immolated his life, so to speak, at the
portable altars of a vast number of hobbies, from the study of
book mites to bear hunting, and could reel off Macbeth from
beginning to end during hikes; but he did not give a damn for
his charges’ morals, preferred ladies to laddies, and did not
meddle in the complexities of Zemblan ingledom. He left, for
some exotic court, after a ten-year stay, in 1932 when our
Prince, aged seventeen, had begun dividing his time between
the University and his regiment. It was the nicest period m his
life. He never could decide what he enjoyed more: the study
of poetry — especially English poetry — or attending parades, or
dancing in masquerades with boy-girls and girl-boys. His
mother died suddenly on July 21, 1936, from an obscure blood
ailment that had also afflicted her mother and grandmother.
She had been much better on the day before — and Charles
Xavier had gone to an all-night ball m the so-called Ducal
Dome in Gnndelwod: lor the nonce, a foimal heterosexual
affair, rather refreshing after some previous sport. At about
four in the morning, with the sun enflammg the tree crests and
Mt, Falk, a pink cone, the king stopped his powerful car at
one of the gates of the palace. The air was so delicate, the light
so lyrical, that he and the three friends he had with him de-
cided to walk through the linden bosquet the rest of the dis-
tance to the Pavonian Pavilion where guests were lodged He
and Otar, a platonic pal, wore tails but the) bad lost their top
hats to the highway winds. A strange something struck all
four of them as they stood under the voung limes m the prim
landscape of scaip and counterscarp fortified by shadow and
countershadow. Otar, a pleasant and cultured adding with a
tremendous nose and sparse hair, had his two mistresses with
him, eighteen-year-old Filalda (whom he later married) and
seventeen-year -old Fleur (whom we shall meet in two other
notes), daughters ot Countess de Fylcr, the Queen’s favorite
lady in waiting. One involuntarily lingers over that picture, as
one does when standing at a vantage point of time and know-
ing in retrospect that in a moment one’s life would undergo a
complete change. So here was Otar, looking with a puzzled
expression at the distant windows of the Queen’s quarters, and
there were the two girls, side by side, thin-legged, in shimmer-
ing wraps, their kitten noses pink, their eyes green and sleepy,
their earrings catching and loosing the fire of the sun. There
were a few people around, as there always were, no matter the

Commentary 77

hour, at this gate, along which a road, connecting with the
Eastern highway, ran. A peasant woman with a small cake she
had baked, doubtlessly the mother of the sentinel who had
not yet come to relieve the unshaven dark young nattdett
(child of night) in his drear)' sentry box, sat on a spur stone
watching in feminine fascination the lueiola-like tapers that
moved from window to window; two workmen, holding their
bicycles, stood staring too at those strange lights; and a drunk
with a walrus mustache kept staggering around and patting
the trunks of the lindens. One picks up minor items at such
slowdowns of life. The King noticed that some reddish mud
flecked the frames of the two bicycles and that their front
wheels were both turned in the same direction, parallel to one
another. Suddenly, down a steep path among the lilac bushes —
a short cut from the Queen's quarters — the Countess came
running and tripping over the hem of her quilted robe, at
the same moment, irom another side of the palace, all seven
councilors, dressed m their tormal splendor and carrying like
plum cakes replicas of various regalia, came striding down the
stairs ol stone, in dignified haste, but she beat them by one
alin and spat out the news. The drunk started to sing a ribald
ballad about “Karhe-Garlie” and fell into the demilune ditch.
Tt is not easy to describe lucidly in short notes to a poem the
various approaches to a fortified castle, and so, in my aware-
ness of this problem, I prepared for John Shade, some time in
June, wheu narrating to him the events briefly noticed in some
ol my comments (sec note to line 130, tor example), a rather
handsomely drawn plan of the chambers, terraces, bastions
and pleasure grounds of the Onhava Palace. Unless it has been
destroyed or stolen, this careful picture in colored inks on a
large (thirty by twenty inches) piece of cardboard might still
be where I last saw it in inid-Julv, on the top of the big black
trunk, opposite the old mangle, in a niche ol the little corridor
leading to the so-called fruit room. If it is not there, it might
be looked for in his upper-floor study. 1 have written about
this to Mrs. Shade but she does not reply to my letters. In case
it still exists, I wish to beg her, without .raising mv voice, and
very humbly, as humbly as the lowliest of the King's subjects
might plead for an immediate restitution of his rights (the
plan is mine and is clearly signed with a black chcss-king
crown after “Kinbote”), to send it, well packed, marked not to
be bent on the wrapper, and by registered mail, to my pub-

78

PALE FIRE

lisher for reproduction in later editions of this work. Whatever
energy I possessed has quite ebbed away lately, and these ex-
cruciating headaches now make impossible the mnemonic
effort and eye strain that the drawing of another such plan
would demand. The black trunk stands on another brown or
brownish even larger one, and there is I think a stuffed fox
or coyote next to them in their dark corner.

Line 79: a preterist

Written against this in the margin of the draft are two lines
of which only the first can be deciphered. It reads:

The evening is the time to praise the day

I feel pretty sure that my friend was trying to incorporate
here- something he and Mrs. Shade had heard me quote in my
lighter-hearted moments, namely a charming quatrain from
our Zemblan counterpart of the Elder Edda, in an anonymous
English translation (Kirby's?) :

The wise at nightfall praise the day.

The wife when she has passed away,

The ice when it is crossed, the bride
When tumbled, and the horse when tried.

Line SO: my bedroom

Our Prince was fond of Fleur as of a sister but with no
soft shadow of incest or secondary homosexual complications.
She had a small pale face with prominent cheekbones, lumi-
nous eyes, and curly dark hair. It was rumored that after go-
ing about with a porcelain cup and Cinderella's slipper for
months, the society sculptor and poet Arnor had found in her
what he sought and had used her breasts and feet for his Lilith
Calling Back Adam; but I am certainly no expert in these
tender matters. Otar, her lover, said that when you walked
behind her, and she knew you were walking behind her, the
swing and play of those shm haunches was something intensely
artistic, something Arab girls were taught in special schools by
special Parisian panders who were afterwards strangled. Her
fragile ankles, he said, which she placed very close together
in her dainty and wavy walk, were the “careful jewels” in
Amor’s poem about a miragarl (“mirage girl”), for which “a

Commentary 79

dream king m the sandy wastes of time would give three hun-
dred camels and three fountains ”

/ tii

On sagaren werem tremkin tri stana
/ t it

Verbalala wod gev ut tn phantana

(I have marked the stress accent*)

The Prince did not heed this rather kitschy prattle (all,
probably, directed by her mother) and, let it be repeated, re-
garded her merely as a sibling, flagrant md fashionable, with
a painted pout and a maussade blurry Gallic wav of ex-
pressing the little she wished to express Her unruffled rude-
ness toward the nervous and garrulous Counttss amused him.
He liked dancing with her — and only with her He hardly
squirmed at ill when she stroked his hand or applied Jierself
soundltssly with open Ups to his cheek which the haggard
afier-the-b ill dawn had already sooted She did not seem to
imnd when hi ibandoned her tor m mlier pleasures and she
met him again in the dirk ol a car or m the halt glow of a
cabaret with the sundued and ambiguous smile ot a kissing
cousin

The fortv days between Queen Blends s death and his
coronation was pei haps the most tr\mg stretch ot time in his
lile He had had no love tor his motner, and the hopeless and
helpless remorse he now tell degtnerated into a sickly physical
teir ot her phantom lhc Coun'ess, who seemed to be near
him, to be rustling ar his side, all the time, had him attend
table-turning stances with an expentneed American medium,
seances at whu h the Queen s spirit, operating the same kind of
plinchette &he had used in her luetime to chat with Thormodus
Tortaeus and A R Wall ice, now bnAly wrote in English.
“Charles take take cherish lose flower flower flower ” An old
psychiatrist so thoroughly bribed bv the Countess as to look,
even on the outside, like a putrid pear, assuit 1 him that his
vices had subconsciously killed his mother and would continue
“to kill her in him” if he did not renounce sodomi A palace
intrigue is a spectral spidci that entangles \ou moie nastily at
everv desperate jerk you try Our Prince w is young, inexperi-
enced, and half-frenzied with insomnia He hardJv struggled at
alL The l ountess spent a fortune on buying his kamerqrum
(groom of the chambei), bis bodyguard, and even the greater

80

PALE FIRE

part of the Court Chamberlain. She took to sleeping in a small
antechamber next to his bachelor bedroom, a splendid spacious
circular apartment at the top of the high and massive South
West Tower. This had been his father’s retreat and was still
connected by a jolly chute in the wall with a round swimming
pool in the hall below, so that the young Prince could start the
day as his father used to start it by slipping open a panel be-
side his army cot and rolling into the shaft whence he whizzed
down straight into bright water. For other needs than sleep
Charles Xavier had installed in the middle of the Persian rug-
covercd floor a so-called patifolia, that is. a huge, oval, luxuri-
ously flounced, swansdown pillow the size of a triple bed. It
was in this ample nest that Fleur now slept, curled up in its
central hollow, under a coverlet of genuine giant panda fur
that had just been rushed from Tibet by a group of Asiatic
well-wishers on the occasion of his ascension to the throne.
The antechamber, wheie the Countess was ensconced, had its
own inner staircase and bathroom, but also communicated by
means of a sliding door with the West Gallery 1 do not know
what advice or command her mother had given Fleur; but the
little thing proved a poor seducer. She kept trying, as one
quietly insane, to mend a broken viola d’ am ore or sat in
dolorous attitudes comparing two ancient flutes, both sad-tuned
and feeble. Meantime, in Turkish garb, he lolled m his father’s
ample chair, his legs ovei its arm, flipping through a volume
*of Historia Zembhra, copying out passages and occasionally
Ashing out of the nether recesses of his seat a pair of old-
fashioned motoring goggles, a black opal ring, a ball of silver
chocolate wrapping, or the star of a foreign order.

It was warm in the evening sun. She wore on the second day
of their ridiculous cohabitation nothing except a kind of but-
tonless and sleeveless pajama top. The sight of her four bare
limbs and three mousepits ( Zemblan anatomy) irritated him,
and while pacing about and pondering his coronation speech,
he would toss towards her, without looking, her shorts or a
terrycloth robe. Sometimes, upon returning to the comfortable
old chair he would find her in it contemplating sorrowfully the
picture of a bogtur (ancient warrior) in the history book. He
would sweep her out of his chair, his eyes still on his writing
pad, and stretching herself she would move over to the window
seat and its dusty sunbeam; but after a while she tried to cud-
dle up to him, and he had to push away her burrowing dark

Commentary 81

curly head with one hand while writing with the other or
detach one by one her little pink claws trom his sleeve or sash.

Her presence at night did not kill insomnia, but at least kept
at bay the strong ghost of Queen Blenda Between exhaustion
and drowsiness, he trifled with paltry fancies, such as getting
up and pounng out a little cold water from a decanter onto
Fleur’s naked shoulder so as to extinguish upon it the weak
gleam of a moonbeam Stentonously the Countess snored m
her la*r And beyond the vestibule of his vigil (heie he began
tailing asleep), in the dark cold gallery, lying all over the
painted marble and piled three or four deep against the locked
door, some dozing, some whimpering, were his new boy
pages, a whole mountain of gift boys from Troth, and Tus-
cany, and Albanoland

He awoke to find her st« ndmg with a comb m her hand
betore his— or rather, his grandfathers— cheval glass a tnp-
t\ch of bottomless light, a really lan*astic mirror, signed with
a diamond by its maker, Sudarg of Bokav She turned about
before it a secret device of reflection gathered an infinite num-
ber of nudes in its depths, garlands of girls in gi aceful and
sorrowful g*oups, diminishing m the limpid distance, or break-
ing into individual nymphs, some of whom, she murmured,
must resemble her ancestor when they were \oung — little
peasant qarhen combing their bur in shallow water as far as
the eye could reach and then the wisttul mermaid from an old
tale, and then nothing

On the ihird night a great stomp ng and lingmg of arms
came from the inner stairs, and there burst in the Prime Coun-
cilor, three Representatives of tne People, and the chief of a
new bodyguard Amusinglv, it wa* the Repiesentatives of the
People whom the ide i of having for queen the granddaughter
of a hddkr infuriated the most That was the end of Charles
Xavier’s chaste romance with I leur, who was piett> yet not
lepcllent (as some cats are less repugnant than others to the
good-natured dog told to endure the bitter effluvium of an
alien genus) With their white suitcases and ulsoletc musical
instruments the two ladies wandered back to the annex of the
Palace rheie followed a sweet twang of relief — and then the
dooi of the anteroom slid open with a merry crash and the
whole heap ot putti tumbled in

He was to go through a far more dramatic ordeal thirteen
years later with Disa, Duchess of Payn, whom he married in

82

PALE FIRE

1949 , as described in notes to lines 275 and 433-434, which
the student of Shade’s poem will reach in due time; there is
no hurry. A series of cool summers ensued. Poor Reur was
still around, though indistinctly so. Disa befriended her after
the old Countess perished in the crowded vestibule of the 1950
Exposition of Glass Animals, when part of it was almost
destroyed by fire, Gradus helping the fire brigade to clear a
Space in the square for the lynching of the non-union incen-
diaries, or at least of the persons (two baffled tourists from
Denmark) who had been mistaken for them. Our young
Queen may have felt some subtle sympathy lor her pale lady
in waiting whom fiom time to time the King glimpsed illu-
minating a concert program by the diagonal light of an ogival
window, or heard making tinny music in Bower B. The beauti-
ful bedroom of his bachelor days is alluded to again in a note
to line 130, as the place of his “luxurious captivity” in the
beginning of the tedious and unnecessary Zemblan Revolu-
tion.

Line 85: Who’d seen the Pope

Pius X, Giuseppe Melchiotre Sarto, 1835 1014; Pope 1903-
1914.

Lines 86-90: Aunt Maud

Maud Shade, 1869-1050, Samuel Shade’s sister. At her
death, Hazel (bom 1934* was not exactly a “babe” as implied
in line 90. I found her paintings unpleasant but interesting.
Aunt Maud was far from spinsterish, and the extravagant and
sardonic turn of her mind must have shocked sometimes the
genteel dames of New Wye.

Lines 90-93. Her room, etc.

In the draft, instead of the final text:

her room

We’ve kept intact. Her trivia for us
Retrace her style: the leaf sarcophagus
(A Luna’s dead and shriveled-up cocoon)

The reference is to what my dictionary defines as “a large,
tailed, pale green moth, the caterpillar of which feeds on the

Commentary

hickory.” I suspect Shade altered this passage because his
moth’s name clashed with “Moon” in the next line.

Line 91: trivia

Among these was a scrapbook in which over a period of
years (1937-1949) Aunt Maud had been pasting clippings of
an involuntarily ludicrous or grotesque nature. John Shad$
allowed me one day to memorandum the first and the last of
the scries; they happened to intercommunicate most pleas-
ingly, I thought. Both stemmed from the same family maga-
zine Life , so justly famed lor its pudibundity in regard to the
mysteries of the male sex; hence one can well imagine how
startled or titillated those families were. The first comes from
the issue of May 10, 1937, p. 67, and advertises the Talon
Trouser Fastener (a iather grasping and painful name, by the
way). It shows a young gent radiating virility among several
ecstatic lady-friends, and the inscription reads: You'll be
amazed that the fly of your trousers could he so dramatically
improved . The second comes from the issue of March 28,
1949, p. 126, and advertises Hanes Fig Leaf Brief. It shows a
modern Eve worshipfuliy peeping from behind a potted tree of
knowledge at a leering young Adam in rather ordinary but
clean underwear, with the front of his advertised brief con-
spicuously and compactly shaded, and the inscription reads:
Nothing beats a fig leaf .

I think there must exist a special subversive group of
pseudo-cupids — plump hairless little devils whom Satan com-
missions to make disgusting mischief in sacrosanct places.

Line 92: the paperweight

The image of those old-fashioned horrors strangely haunted
our poet. I have clipped from a newspaper that recently re-
printed it an old poem of his where the souvenir shop also
preserves a landscape admired by the tourist:

Mountain View

Between the mountain and the eye
The spirit of the distance "draws
A veil of blue amorous gauze,

The very texture of the sky.

A breeze reaches the pines, and I
Join in the general applause.

84

PALE FIRE

But we all know it cannot last.

The mountain is too weak to wait —

Even it reproduced ind gl \ssed
In me as in a paperweight

Line 98 On Chapman’s Homer

A reference to the title ot Keats’ famous sonnet (often
quoted in America) which, owing to a printer’s absentminded-
ness, has been drolly transposed, from some othei article, into
the account of a sports event Tor other vivid misprints see
note to line 802

LineJ#f No free man needs a God

""'‘when one considers the numbeiless thinkers and poets m
the history ot human creativity whose laedom of mind was
enhanced rather than stunted bv Faith one is bound to ques-
tion the wisdom ot this easy aphorism (see also note to line
549).

Line 109 iridule

An iridescent cloudlet, Zomblan muderpe rhi i Ik The teim
“iridule” is, I believe, Shades own invention \bove it, in the
Fair Copy (card 9, fuly A) he has written m pencil “peacock-
herl ” The peacock-herl is the body of a certain sort ot artificial
fly aLo called “alder ” So the owner ot tins motor court an
ardent fisherman, tells me. (See also the “strange nacreous
gleams” in line 634 )

Line 119 Dr. Sutton

This is a recombination of letters taken from two names,
one beginning m “Sut, ’ the other ending in ‘ ton * Two distin-
guished medical men, Jong retired trom practice, dwelt on our
hill. Both were very old friends ot the Shades, one had a
daughter, president of Sybil’s club— and this is the Di Sut-
ton I visuah/e m my notes to lines 181 and 1000 He is also
mentioned m Line 98b

Lines 120-121. five minutes wcie equal to forty ounces, etc.

In the left margin, and parallel to it: “In the Middle Ages
an hour was equal to 480 ounces of fine sand or 22,560 atoms.”

I am unable to check either this statement or the poet’s
calculations in regard to five minutes, i.e, three hundred

Commentary 85

seconds, since J do not see how 480 can be divided by 300 or
vice versa, but perhaps I am only tired. On the day (July 4)
John Shade wrote this, Gradus the Gunman was getting ready
to leave Zembla for his steady blunderings through two hemi-
spheres (see note to line 181).

Line 130: I never bounced a ball or swung a bat

Frankly I too never excelled in soccer and cricket; I am a
passable horseman, a vigorous though unorthodox skier, a
good skater, a tricky wrestler, and an enthusiastic rock-
climber.

Line 130 is followed in the draft by four verses which Shade
discarded in favor of the Fair Copy continuation (line 131
etc.). This false start goes:

As children play ins; in a cattle find

In some old closet full of toys, behind

The animals and masks, a sliding door

[four words heauly crossed out] a seciet corriaor —

The comparison hus remained suspended. Presumably our
poet intended to attach it to the account of his stumbling upon
some mysterious truth in the fainting fits of his boyhood, I
cannot say how sorry I am that he rejected these lines. I regret
it not onlv because of their intrinsic beauty, which is great, but
also because the image they contain was suggested by some-
thing Shade had from me. I h «ve ahead) alluded m the course
of these notes to the adventures of Charles Xavier, last King of
Zembla, and to the keen interest my friend took m the many
stories I told him about that king. The index card on which
the variant has been pieserved is datea July 4 and is a direct
echo of our sunset rambles in the fragrant lanes of New Wye
and Dulwich. “Tell me more,” he would say as he knocked his
pipe empty against a beech trunk, and while the colored cloud
lingered, and while far away m the lighted house on the hill
Mrs. Shade sat quietly enjoying a video drama, I gladly ac-
ceded to my friend’s request.

In simple words I described the curious situation in which
the King found himself during the first months of the rebel-
lion. He had the amusing feeling of his being the only black
piece in what a composer of chess problems might term a
king-in-the*corner waiter of the solus rex type. The Royalists,

86 PALEFIRE

m at least the Modems (Moderate Democrats), might have
still prevented the state from turning into a commonplace
modern tyranny, had they been able to cope with the tainted
gold and the robot troops that a powerful police state from
its vantage ground a few sea miles away was pouring into
the Zemblan Revolution. Despite the hopelessness of the sit-
uation, the King refused to abdicate. A haughty and morose
captive, he was caged in his rose-stone palace from a corner
turret of which one could make out with the help of field
glasses lithe youths diving into the swimming pool of a fairy
tale sport club, and the English ambassador in old-fashioned
flannels playing tennis with the Basque coach on a clay court
as remote as paradise. How serene were the mountains, how
tenderly painted on the western vault of the sky!

Somewhere in the mist of the city there occurred every day
disgusting outbursts of violence, arrests and executions, but
the great city rolled on as smoothly as ever, the cafes were
full, splendid plays were being performed at the Royal
Theater, and it was really the palace which contained the
strongest concentrate of gloom. Stone-faced, square-shoul-
dered komizars enforced strict discipline among the troops on
duty within and without. Puritan prudence had scaled up the
wine cellars and removed all the maid servants from the south-
ern wing. The ladies in waiting had, of course, left long before,
at the time the King exiled his Queen to her villa on the
French Riviera. Thank heavens, she was spared those dread-
ful days in the polluted palace 1

The door of every room was guarded. The banqueting hall
had three custodians and as many as four loafed in the library
whose dark recesses seemed to harbor all the shadows of
treason. The bedrooms of the few remaining palace attendants
had each its armed parasite, drinking forbidden rum with an
old footman or taking liberties with a young page. And in the
great Heralds’ Hall one could always be sure of finding ribald
jokers trying to squeeze into the steel panoply of its hollow
knights. And what a smell of leather and goat in the spacious
chambers once redolent of carnations and lilacs!

This tremendous company consisted of two main groups:
ignorant, ferocious-looking but really quite harmless con-
scripts from Thule, and taciturn, very polite Extremists from
the famous Glass Factory where the revolution had flickered
first. One can now reveal (since he is safe in Paris) that this

Commentary 87

contingent included at least one heroic royalist so virtuosically
disguised that he made his unsuspecting fellow guards look like
mediocre imitators. Actually Odon happened to be one of the
most prominent actors in Zembla and was winning applause
in the Royal Theater on his off-duty nights. Through him the
King kept in touch with numerous adherents, young nobles,
artists, college athletes, gamblers, Black Rose Paladins, mem-
bers of fencing clubs, and other men of fashion and adventure.
Rumors rumbled. It was said that the captive would soon be
tried by a special court; but it was also said that he would be
shot while ostensibly being transported to another place of
confinement. Although flight was discussed daily, the schemes
of the conspirators had more aesthetic than practical value. A
powerful motorboat had been prepared in a coastal cave near
Blawick (Blue Cove) m western Zembla, beyond the chain of
tall mountains which separated the city from the sea; the
imagined reflections of the trembling transparent water on
rock wall and boat were tantalizing, but none of the schemers
could suggest how the King could escape irom his castle and
pass safely through its fortifications.

One August day, at the beginning of his third month of
luxurious captivity in the South West Tower, he was accused
of using a fop’s hand mirror and the sun’s cooperative rays to
flash signals from his lofty casement. The vastness of the view
it commanded was denounced not only as conducive to treach-
ery but as producing in the surveyor an aiiy sense of supe-
riority over his low-lodged jailers. Accordingly, one evening
the King’s cot-and-pot were transferred to a dismal lumber
room on the same side of the palace but on its first floor. Many
years before, it had been the dressing room of his grandfather,
Thurgus the Third. After Thurgus died (in 1900) his ornate
bedroom was transformed into a kind of chapel and the
adjacent chamber, shorn of its full-length multiple mirror and
green silk sofa, soon degenerated into what it had now re-
mained for half a century, an old hole of a room with a locked
trunk in one corner and an obsolete sewing machine in an-
other. It was, reached from a marble-flagged gallery, running
along its north side and sharply turning immediately west of
it to form a vestibule in the southwest corner of the Palace,
The only window gave on an inner court on the south side.
This window had once been a glorious dreamway of stained
glass, with a fire-bird and a dazzled huntsman, but a football

88

PALE FIRE

had recently shattered the fabulous forest scene and now its
new ordinary pane was barred from the outside On the west-
side wall, above a whitewashed closet, hung a laige photo-
graph m a frame of black velvet The fleeting and faint but
thousands of times repeated action of the same sun tbit was
accused of sending messages from the tower, had gradually
patmated this picture which showed the romantic profile and
broad bare shoulders of the forgotten actiess Ins Acht, said
to have been for several years, ending with her sudden death m
1888, the mistress ol Hiurgis In the opposite, east-side wall a
frivolous-looking door, similar in tuiquoise coloration to the
room’s only othex one (opening into the gallciv ) but securely
hasped, had once led to the old rake s bedchamber, it had now
lost its crystal knob, and was flanked on tne east-side wall by
two banished engravings belonging 10 the room’s pt nod of
decay They wert. of the sort that is not leally supposed to be
looked at, pictures that e\ist mcrel> as peroral notions ot pic-
tures to meet the humble orinmcntal needs ot some corridor
or waiting room one was a shibby and lugubrious Fete
Flumande ifter Leniers the other had once being in the nursery
whose sleepy denizens had alwi>s taken it to depict toaniv
waves m the forei^round instead of the blurry shapes of
melancholy sheep that it now revealed

The King sighed and began to undress His camp bed and a
bedtable hid been placed, facing the window, m the noith-
east corner East was the turquoise door, north, the door of
the gallery, west, the door of the closet, south, tne window
His black blazer and white tre users were taken away by his
former valet s valet The King sat down on the edge ot the
bed in his pajamas The man leturned with a pair ot morocco
bed slippers, pulled them on his master’s listless feet, and was
off with the discaided pumps The King’s wandering gaze
stopped at the casement which was hall open One could see
pari of the dimly lit court where under an enclosed poplar
two soldiers on a stone bench were playing lansquenet The
summer night was starless and sinless, with distant spasms ot
silent lightning. Around the lantern that stood on the beach a
batlike tnoth blindly flapped — until the punter knocked it
down with his cap The Kmg yawned, and the illumined card
players shivered and dissolved m the prism of his tears His
bored glance traveled from wall to wall. The gallery door
stood slightly ajar, and one could heai the steps of the guard

Commentary 89

coming and going. Above the closet, Iris Aebt squared her
shoulders and looked away. A cricket cricked. The bedside
light was just strong enough to put a bright gleam on the gilt
key in the lock of the closet door. And all at once that spark on
that key caused a wonderful conflagration to spread in the
prisoner’s mind.

We shall now go back from mid-August 1958 to a certain
afternoon in May three decades earlier when he was a dark
strong lad of thirteen with a stiver ring on the forefinger of his
Min-tanncd hand. Queen Blenda, his mother, had recently left
for Vienna and Rome. He had several dear playmates but none
could compete with Oleg, Duke of Rahl. In those days growing
boys ot high-born families wore on festive occasions— of
which we had so many during our long northern spring —
sleeveless |eisc)s, white anklesocks with black buckle shoes,
and very tight, very \hort shorts called hotinguens. I wish I
could provide the reader with cut-out figures and parts of at-
tire as given in paper-doll charts tor children armed with
scissors. It would biighten a little these dark evenings that are
destroying my brain. Both lads were handsome, long-legged
spec’mens of Varangian boyhood. At twelve, Oleg was the
best center forward at the Ducal School. When stripped and
shiny in the mist ot the bath house, hi9 bold virilia contrasted
harshly with his girlish grace. He was a regular faunlet. On
that partieuLi afternoon a copious shower lacquered the
spring foliage of the palace garden, and oh, how the Persian
lilacs m riotous bloom tumbled and tossed behind the green-
streaming, amethyst-blotched windowpancs! One would have
to play indoors. Oleg was late. Would he come at all?

It occurred to the young Prince to disinter a set of precious
toys (the gift of a foreign potentate who had recently been
assassinated) which had amused Oleg and him during a
previous Easter, and then had been laid aside as happens with
those special, artistic playthings which allow their bubble of
pleasure to yield all its tang at once before retreating into
museum oblivion. What he particularly desired to rediscover
now was an elaborate toy circus contained in a box as big as a
croquet case. He craved for it; his eyes, his brain, and that in
his brain which corresponded to the ball of this thumb, vividly
remembered the brown boy acrobats with spangled nates, an
elegant and melancholy clown with a rufl, and especially three
pup-sized elephants of polished wood with such versatile joints

90

PALE PIPE

that you could make the sleek jumbo stand upright on one
foreleg or rear up solidly on the top of a small white barrel
ringed with red. Less than a fortnight had passed since Oleg’s
last visit, when for the first time the two boys had been al-
lowed to share the same bed, and the tingle of tJieir misbe-
havior, and the foreglov of another such night, were now
mixed in our young Print ^ with an embairassment that sug-
gested refuge m earlier, more innocent games.

His English tutor who, after a picnic in Mandexil Forest,
was laid up with a sprained ankle, did not know where that
circus might be; he advised looking lor it in an old lumber
room at the end of the West Gallery. Thither the Prince be-
took himself. That dusty black trunk? It looked grimly nega-
tive. The rain was more audible here owing to the proximity
of a prolix gutter pipe What about the closet? Its gilt key
turned reluctantly. All three shelves and the spate beneath
were stuffed with disparate objects’ a palette with the diegs ot
many sunsets; a cupful of counters; an ivory backscratcher; a
thirty-twomo edition ol hmon oi Athens translated into
Zerablan by his uncle Conmal, the Queen’s brother; a seaside
situla (toy pail); a siMy-fiv e-carat blue diamond rfUMdentally
added in his childhood, from his late father’s knickknackatorv,
to the pebbles and she«K in that pail- a fineer of chalk* and a
square board with a design of interlaced figures foi some long-
forgotten game. He was about to look elsewhere in the closet
when on trying to dislodge a piece of black velvet, one corner
of which had unaccount ibly got caught behind the shelf, some-
thing gave, the shelf budged, proved removable, and revealed
just under its farther edge, in the back of the closet, a keyhole
to which the same gilt key was found to fit.

Impatiently he cleared the other two shelves of all they held
(mainly old clothes and shoes), removed them as he had done
with the middle one, and unlocked the sliding door at the
back of the closet. The elephants were forgotten, he stood on
the threshold of a secret passage. Its deep darkness was total
but something about its speluncar acoustics foretold, clearing
its throat hollowly, great things, and he hurried to his own
quarters to fetch a couple of flashlights and a pedometer. As
he was returning, Oleg arrived. He carried a tulip. His soft
blond locks had been cut since his last visit to the palace, and
the young Prince thought: Yes, I knew he would be different.
But when Oleg knitted his golden brows and bent close to hear

Commentary 91

about the discovery, the young Pnncc knew by the downy
warmth of that crimson ear and by the vivacious nod greeting
the proposed investigation, that no change had occurred in his
deal bedfellow.

As soon as Monsieur Beauchamp had sat down for a game
of chess at the bedside of Mr. Campbell and had offered his
raised fists to choose fiom, the young Prince took Oleg to the
magical closet. The wary, silent, grccn-carpeted steps of an
cscaher derobe led to a stone-paved underground passage.
Strictly speaking it was “underground” only m brief spells
when, after burrowiug under the southwest vestibule next to
the lumber 100 m, it went under a series oi terraces, under the
avenue ot birches m the io)al patk, and then under the three
tiansverse streets. Academy Boulevard, Conolanus Lane and
Jimon Alk>, that still separated it from its final destination.
Otherwise, m its angular and cryptic course it adapted itself
to ihc various structures which it followed heie availing itself
of a bulwark 10 fit in side like a pencil in the pencil hold of
a pocket diary, tncre running through ihe cellars of a great
mansion too nth in dark passageways to notice the stealthy
intrusion Possibly, m the intervening vears, certain arcane
connections had been established between the abandoned pas-
sage and the outer world by the random repercussions ot work
in surrounding lajuis of masonry Oi hy the blind pokings of
time itself, for here and there magic apertures and penetra-
tions, so nairow and deep as to drive one insane, could be
deduced from a pool of sweet, foul ditch w ater, bespeaking a
moat, or from a dusky odoi of earth a"d turf, marking the
proximity of a glacis slope overhead, and at one point, where
the passage crept through ihe basement of a huge ducal villa,
with hothouses famous for their collections of desen flora, a
light spread of sand momentarily changed the sound ot one’s
tread. Oleg walked in front, his shapely buttocks encased in
tight indigo cotton moved alertly, and his own eiect radiance,
rather than his flambeau, seemed to illume with leaps of light
the low ceiling and crowding walls. Behind him the young
Prince’s electric torch played on the ground and gave a coat-
ing of flour to the back of Oleg’s bare thighs. The air was
musty and cold On and on went the fantastic burrow. It de-
veloped a slight ascending grade The pedometer had tocked
off 1,888 yards, when at last they reached the end. The magic
key of the lumber room closet slipped with gratifying ease into

92

PALE FIRE

the keyhole of a green door confronting them, and would have
accomplished the act promised by its smooth entrance, had not
a burst of strange sounds coming from behind the door caused
our explorers to pause. Two terrible voices, a man’s and a
woman's, now rising to a passionate pitch, now sinking to
raucous undertones, were exchanging insults in Gutnish as
spoken by the fisherfolk of Western Zembla. An abominable
threat made the woman shriek out in fright. Sudden silence
ensued, presently broken by the man’s murmuring some brief
phrase of casual approval (“Perfect, my dear,” or “Couldn’t
be better”) that was more eerie than anything that had come
before.

Without consulting each other, the young Prince and his
friend veered in absurd panic and, with the pedometer beat-
ing wildly, raced back the way they had come. “Oufi” said
Oleg once the hst shell had been replaced. “You’ie all chalkv
behind,” said the young Pnnce as they swung upstairs. They
found Beauchamp and Campbell ending their game in a draw.
It w r as near dinner time. The two lads were told to wash their
hands. The recent thrill of adventure had been supciseded al-
ready by another sort of excitement. They locked themselves
up. The tap ran unheeded. Both were m e manly state and
moaning like doves.

This detailed recollection, whose structure and maculation
have taken some time to describe in this note, skimmed
through the King's memory in one instant Certain creatures
of the past, and this was one of them, may he dormant for
thirty yeaTS as this one had, while their natural habitat un-
dergoes calamitous alterations. Soon after the discovery of the
secret passage he almost died of pneumonia. In his delirium
he would strive one moment to follow a luminous disk probing
an endless tunnel and try the next to clasp the melting
haunches of his fair angle. To recuperate he was sent for a
couple of seasons to southern Europe. The death of Oleg at
fifteen, in a toboggan accident, helped to obliterate the reality
of their adventure. A national revolution was needed to make
that secret passage real again.

Having satisfied himself that the guard’s creaky steps had
moved some distance away, the King opened the closet. It was
empty now, save for the tiny volume of Timon Afimkert still
lying in one corner, and for some old sport clothes and gym-
nasium shoes crammed into the bottom compartment. The

Commentary 93

footfalls were now coming back. He did not dare pursue his
examination and relocked the closet door.

It was evident he would need a few moments of perfect
security to perform with a minimum of noise a succession of
small actions: enter the closet, lock it from the inside, remove
the shelves, open the secret door, replace the shelves, slip into
the yawning darkness, close the secret door and lock it. Say
ninety seconds.

He stepped out into the gallery, and the guard, a rather
h mdsome but incredibly stupid Extremist, immediately ad-
vanced towards him. “I have a certain urgent desire,” said
the King. “I want, Hal, to play the piano before going to bed.”
Hal (if that was his name) led the way to the music room
where, as the King knew, Odon kept vigil over the shrouded
harp. He was a lovbrovved. buily Irishman, with a pink head
now covered by the rakish cap of a Russki factory worker.
The King sat down al the Bechstein and, as soon as they were
left alone, explained briefly the situation while taking tinkling
notes with one hand: “Never heard of any passage,” muttered
Odon with the annoyance ot a chess player who is shown how
he might have saved the game he has lost. Was His Majesly
absolutely sure? His Majesty was. Did he suppose it took one
out of the Palace? Definitely out of the PJace.

Anyway, Odon had to leave in a few moments, being due
to act that night m I he Merman . a tine old melodrama which
had not been performed, he said, for at least three decades.
* Pm quite satisfied with my own meloarama,” remarked the
King. “Alas,” said Odon Furrowing his forehead, he slowly
got into his leathern coat. One could do nothing tonight. If he
asked the commandant to be left on duty, it would only pro-
voke suspicion, and the least suspicion might be fatal. Tomor-
row he would find some opportunity to inspect that new
avenue of escape, ;/ it was that and not a dead end. Would
Charlie (His Majesty) promise not to attempt anything until
then? “But they are moving closer and closer,’ said the King
alluding to the noise of rapping and ripping that came from
the Picture Gallery. “Not really,” said Odon, “one inch per
hour, maybe two. 1 must be going now,” he added indicating
with a twitch of the eyelid the solemn and corpulent guard
who was coming to relieve him.

Under the unshakable but quite erroneous belief that the
crown jewels were concealed somewhere in the Palace, the

PALP FIRE

94

new administration had engaged a couple of foreign experts
(see note to line 68 1 ) to locate them. The good work had been
going on tor a months. The two Russians, after practically
dismantling the Council Chamber and several other rooms of
state, had transferred their activities to that part of the gallery
where the huge oils of Eystein had fascinated several genera*
tions of Zemblan princes and princesses While unable to catch
a likeness, and therefore wisely limiting himself to a con-
ventional style of complimentary portraiture, Eystein showed
himself to be a prodigious master of the trompe rocil in the
depiction of various objects surrounding his dignified dead
models and making them look even deader by contrast to the
fallen petal or the polished panel that he rendered with such
love and skill But in <*ome ot tho>e portraits Eystein had also
resorted to a weird form of trickery: among his decorations of
wood or wool, gold or velvet, he would mseit one which was
really made of the material elsewhere unit ited by paint. This
device which was apparently meant to enhance the effect of
his tactile and ton d values had, however, somutung ignoble
about it and disclosed not only an essential flaw m Eystein’s
talent, but the basic fact that “reality’' is neither the subject
nor the object of true art which ci cates its own special reality
having nothing to do with the average “reibtv" perceived by
the communal eve But to return to our technicians whose
tapping is approaching along the g tilery toward the bend
where the King and Odon stand ready to part At this spot
hung a portrait representing a former Keeper oi the Treasure,
decrepit Count Kernel, who was painted with fingers resting
lightly on an embossed and emblazoned box w’hose side facing
the spectator consisted ot an inset oblong made of real bronze,
while upon the shaded top ot the bos, drawn m perspective,
the artist had pictured a plate with the beautifully executed,
twin-lobed, brainhke, halved kernel of a walnut.

"They are in for a surprise,” murmured Odon in his mother
tongue, while in a corner the fat guard was going through
some dutiful, rather lonesome, rifle-butt-banging formalities.

The two Soviet professionals could be excused for as-
suming they would find a real receptacle behind the real
metal. At the present moment they were about to decide
whether to pry out the plaque or take down the picture; but
we can anticipate a little and assure the reader that the re-
ceptacle, an oblong hole in the wall, was there all nght; it

Commentary 95

contained nothing, however, except the broken bits of a nut-
shell.

Somewhere an iron curtain had gone up, baring a painted
one, with nymphs and nenuphars. “I shall bring you your
flute tomorrow,” cried Odon meaningfully in the vernacular,
and smiled, and waved, already bemisted, already receding
into the remoteness of his Thespian world.

The fat guard led the King back to his room and turned
him over to handsome Hal. It was halt past nine. The King
went to bed. The valet, a moody rascal, brought him his usual
milk and cognac nightcap and took awav his slippers and
dressing gown. The man was practically out of the room when
the King commanded him to put out tht light, upon which an
arm re-entered and a gloved hand found and turned the switch
Distant lightning still throbbed now and then in the window.
The King finished his drink in the dark and replaced the empty
tumblci on the night table whore it knocked with a “subdued
img against a steel flashlight prepared by the thoughtful au-
thorities m case elecuicitv failed as it lately did now and then.

He could not sleep. Turning bis head he watched the line
of light under the door. Present!) it was gently opened and
his handsome )oung jailer peeped in A bizarre little thought
danced tlirough the King's mind; but all the youth wanted
wis to wirn his prisoner that he intended to join his com-
panion in the adpeent court, and that the door would be
locked until he returned Jt, however, the cx-King needed
anything, he could call from hi* window. “How long will you
be absent?” asked the King. ‘TVij \ea ik [l know not],” an-
swered the guard, “Good night, bad hov said the King

lie waited for the guaid’s silhouette to entci the light in the
courtyard where the other Thuleans welcomed him to their
game, 'f hen, m secure darkness, the King rummaged for some
clothes on the floor of the closet and pulled on, over his
pajamas, what felt like skiing trouseis and something that
smelled like an old sweater JFuithei gropings yielded a pair of
sneakers and a woolen headgear with flaps He then went
through the actions mentally rehearsed before. As he was re-
moving the second shelf, an object fell with a miniature thud;
he guessed what it was and took it with him as a talisman.

He dared not press the button of his torch until properly
engulfed, nor could he afford a noisy stumble, and therefore
negotiated the eighteen invisible steps in a more or less sitting

96

PALE FIRE

position like a timid novice bum-scraping down the lichened
rocks of Mt. Kron. The dim light he discharged at last was
now his dearest companion, Oleg’s ghost, the phantom of
freedom. He experienced a blend of anguish and exultation, a
kind of amorous joy, the like of which be had last known on
the day of his coronation, when, as he walked to his throne, a
few bars of incredibly rich, deep, plenteous music (whose au-
thorship and physical soifrce he was never able to ascertain)
struck his ear, and he inhaled the hair oil of the pretty page
who had bent to brush a rose petal off the footstool, and by
the light of his torch the King now saw that he was hideously
garbed in bright red.

The secret passage seemed to have grown more squalid.
The intrusion of its surroundings was even more evident
than on the day when two lads shivering in thin jerseys and
shorts had explored it. The pool of opalescent .ditch water
had grown in length; along its edge walked a sick bat like
a cripple with a broken umbrella. A remembered spread of
colored sand bore the thirty-year-old patterned imprint of
Oleg’s shoe, as immortal as the tracks of an Egyptian child’s
tame gazelle made thirty centuries ago on blue Nilotic bricks
drying in the sun. And, at the spot where the passage went
through the foundations of a museum, there had somehow
wandered down, to exile and disposal, a headless statue of
Mercury, conductor of souls to the Lower World, and a cracked
krater with two black figures shown dicing under a black palm.

The last bend of the passage, ending in the green door,
contained an accumulation of loose boards across which the
fugitive stepped not without stumbling. He unlocked the door
and upon pulling it open was stopped by a heavy black dra-
pery. As he began fumbling among its vertical folds for some
sort of ingress, the weak light of bis torch rolled its hopeless
eye and went out. He dropped it: it fell into muffled nothing-
ness. The King thrust both arms into the deep folds of the
chocolate-smelling cloth and, despite the uncertainty and the
danger of the moment, was, as it were, physically reminded
by his own movement of the comical, at first controlled, then
frantic undulations of a theatrical curtain through which a
nervous actor tries vainly to pass. This grotesque sensation,
at this diabolical instant, solved the mystery of the passage
evert before he wriggled at last through the drapery into the
dimly lit, dimly cluttered lumbarkamer which had once been

Commentary 97

Iris Acht’s dressing room m the Royal Theater It still was
what it had become after her death a dusty hole of a room
communicating with a kind ol hall whither performers would
sometimes wander during iehearsals Pieces of mythological
scenery leaning against the wall half concealed a large dusty
velvet-framed photograph of King Thurgus — bushy mustache,
pince-nez, medals —as he was at the time when the mile-long
corridor provided an extnvagant means for his trysts with
In .

The scarlet-clothed fugitive blinked and made for the hall.
It led to a number of dressing roonia Somewhere beyond it
a tempest ol plaudits grew in volume befoie petering out.
Other distant sounds marked the beginning of the intermis-
sion Several costumed pertoimers passed by the King, and
in one ot them he recognized Odon He was wearing a velvet
jicket with brass buttons knickerbockers and striped stock-
ings the Sundav ittire ol Gutnish fishermen, and his list still
clutched the cardboard Inifc with which he had just dis-
patched his sweerhe \rt ‘ Good God,’ he said on seeing the
King

Pluckng coupk of cloik> from a heap of fantastic rai-
ments, Odon pushed the King toward a staircase leiding to
the street Simult intoush there was a commotion among a
group of people smoking on the landing An old intriguer
who by dint of fiwning on variola Extremis* officials had
obtained the post of beeme Director, suddenly pointed a vi-
br ting fingei at the King, but being afflicted with a bad stam-
mer could not utter the vords of indignant recognition which
were making Ins dentures duck The King tried to pull the
front flip of his cap over h«s lace — ana almost lost his foot-
ing at the bottom ot the mrrow stairs Outside it wa> raining
A puddle reflected his sc it let silhouette Several vehicles stood
m a transverse lane It was there that Odon usually left his
racing car For one drendful second he thought it was gone,
but then recalled with exquisite relief that he had puked it
that night m an adjicent aJlcy (bee the mtucsting note to
line 149).

lines 131-132 I was the shade w ot the waxwing slam by
feigned remoteness in the window pane

The exquisite mdodN of the two Imes opening the poem
is picked up here, fhe repetition ot that long-drawn note is

98

PALE P1RF

saved from monotony by the subtle variation m line H2
where the assonance between its second word and the rhyme
gives the ear a kind of languorous pleasuie as would the echo
of some half-remembered sorrowful song whose strain is more
meaningful than its words Today, when the “feigned remote-
ness’ has indeed pcitormcd its dicidiul duty and the poem
we have is the only shulow’ that remains we cannot help
reading into these lines something more than mirrorplay and
mnage shimmer We fed doom, m the urn^e ol Gradus,
eating awuy the miles and miles ol fuentd lemoteness’
between hm and pooi Shade ITc, *oo is to meet, in his urgent
and blind flight a reflection th it will shitler him

Althougn f nidus a\adeu himself ol all v uie its of locomo-
tion. — rented cirs loed trains, tscildors airphnes — ‘omc-
how the eye of tlie mind sees him ind the nm« hs of the
mind feel him as always strtakmc icioss the sky with bhuk
traveling bag in one band inJ Joostly folded umbrella iii the
other, in a sustained glide Inch o\cr st i and land I he loice
propelling hin» is the maqit action of Sii ide s potm itself, the
very mcchansn and ^\e p unc the jowuful umhic
motoi Never before has the m» \oi iblt idvanit if fate tc-
cened suen a sensuous form foi tthei images of tint trail
scendental tr imp’s approach see no<e to line 1 ;)

Line 1 7 lenmiscatc

l4 A unicursil bicuxula*' quaitit sivs my wtaiy old uc-
tionary 1 cannot understand whr this his io do with hi
cycling and suspect tint Sh idt s pi rise n is no rc ll ineimnp
As othei poets before him, he s ems to have tal’en heie under
the spell of misleading euphony

Io take a striking example wh u cir, I e more iC<oundmg
more resplendent, more suggest vc of ehot i! and sculptured
beaut), than the word LOiamin 7 In rt dity howeser, it merely
denotes the rude stiap with winch \ /tmbhn herdsman at-
taches his humble provisions and ragged blanket to the meek-
est ot his (ows when driving th< m up to the \tbodar (upland
pastures)

Line 143 a clockwork toy

By a stroke of luck I have seen it f One evening m May or
June I dropped m to remind my friend about a collection ol
pamphlets, by his grandfather, an eccentric clergyman, that

Commentary 99

he had once said was stored in the basement. I found him
gloomily waiting for some people (members of his depart-
ment, I believe, and their wives) who were coming for a for-
mal dinner. He willingly took me down into the basement
but after rummaging among piles of du*tv books and maga-
zines, said he would try to find them some other time. It
was then that I saw it on a shelf, between a candlestick and
a handless alarm clock. He, thinking I might think it had be-
longed to his dead daughter, hastily explained it was as old
as he. The boy was a little Negro of painted tin with a key-
hole in his side and no breadth to speak of, just consisting of
two more or less fused profiles, and his wheelbarrow was now
all bent and broken. He said, brushing the dust off his sleeves,
that he kept it as a kind of memento mori — lie had had a
strange fainting fit one day in his childhood while playing
with that toy. We were inteirupted by S\bifs voice calling
trom above; but never mind, row the ru;4ic clockwork shall
work again, for l have the k?y.

Line 149: one foot upon a mountain

The Bera Range, a two-hundrcd-mile-leng chain of rugged
mountains, not quite reaching the northern end ot the Zem-
blan peninsula (cut ofT basaliv by an impassable canal from
the mainland of madness), divides it into two parts, the flour-
ishing eastern region ot Onhava and other townships, such
as Aros and Gnndelw od. and the much narrower western
sfrp with its quaint fishing hamlets and pleasant beach re-
sons. The Iv/o coasts are connected by two asphalted high-
ways. the older one shirks difficulties by running first along
the eastern slopes northward to Odevalla, Yeslove and Embla,
and only then turning west at the northmosi point of the
peninsula; the newer one, an elaborate, twisting, marvelously
graded road, traverses the range westward from just north of
Onhava to Bregbcrg, and is termed in tourist booklets a “scenic
drive.” Severer! trails cross the mountains at various points
and lead to passes none or which exceeds an altitude of five
thousand feet; a few peaks rise some two thousand feet higher
and retain their snow in midsummer; and from one of them,
the highest and hardest, Mt. Glitterntin, one can distinguish
on clear days, tar out to the east, beyond the Gult of Surprise,
a dim iridescence which some say is Russia.

After escaping from the theater, oui friends planned to

100

PALE I IRl

follow the old highway for twenty miles northward, and then
turn left on an unfrequented dirt road that would have brought
them eventually to the mam hideout of the Karhsts, a baronial
castle in a fii wood on the eastern slope of the Bera Range But
the vigilant stutterer had finally exploded in spasmodic speech,
telephones had frantically worked, and the fugitives had hardly
covered a dozen miles, when a confused blaze in the darkness
before them, at the intersection ol the old and new highways,
revealed a roadblock that at least hid the merit of canceling
both Toutes at one stroke

Odon spun the car around and it the first opportunity
swerved westward into the mountains 1 he narrow and bumpy
lane that cngullcd them passed by a woodsht i, arrived it a
torrent, crossed it with a guat clicking of bonds, and
presently degenerated into a stump cluttued cutting They
were at the edge of M mdcvil 1 orest Thunder was rumbling m
the terrible biown sky

For a few second" both men sioou look ng upwaid The
night and the trees concealed the eclivit T^om this pomt a
good climber might reach Brcgbcrg Pass h diwn-if he
managed to hit a regular trail liter pushing through the black
wall of the forest It wis decided to pmi, chiihe proceeding
toward the remote treasure in the st. cave ud Odon re-
maining behind as a decos lie woo’d he said it id them a
merry chase, assume sens moral dis^mes -u it git into touch
with the rest of the gang His mouia w u an \mcriv n Itoni
New W)e in New Lngland She is sud to have hern the hist
woman m the world to shoot wolvc , mi, l believe other
animals, trorn an an plane

A handshake, a flash of Kghtmrg \s the Ring waded into
the damp, dark bracken, its odor as Uuv resilience, and the
mixture of soft growth and sleep giound tetmnded him ot the
times he had piemcxed heicabouts — ir another pan ol the
foiest but on the same mountainside, and higher up, as a boy,
on the boulderfield where Mr C ampbell had once twisted an
ankic and had to be earned down, smol ing his pipe, bv two
husky attendants. Rather dull memories, on the whole Wasn't
there a hunting box nearby — just beyond Silfhar Falls 9 Good
capercaillie aod woodcock shooting— a sport much enjoyed by
his late mother. Queen Blenda, a tweedy and horsy queen
Now as then, the lain seethed in the black trees, and if you
paused you heard your heart thumping, and the distant roar

Commentary 101

of the torrent What is the time, Lot or 9 He pressed his re-
peater and, undismayed, it hissed and tinkled out ten twenty-
one

Anyone who has tried to struggle up a steep slope, on a dark
night, through a tangle ot inimical vtgetation, knows what a
formidable task our mountameei had before him For more
thau two hours he kept at it, stumbling ig unst stumps, falling
into ravines, clutching at invisible bushes, fightingoff an army
of conifers He lost his cloak He wondered it he had not better
curl up in the undergrowth and wait foi daybreak All at once
a pinhead light grimed ahead and presently be found himself
staggering up a^lippery, recently mown meadow A dog
barked A stone rolled underfoot He rc lined he was near a
mountainside bou (tarmhouse) He also inbred that he had
toppled into a deep muddy ditch

The gn .tiled farmer and his plump wife who, like personages
in an old tedious tale offered the drenched fugitive a welcome
shelter, mistook hmi for an eccentric cam per who had got de-
tached from his group He was allowed to ai\ burnt 11 m a
waun kitchen where he was given a fur\ tab nu at of bread
and cheese, and a bowl of mountain mead His feelings (grati-
tude exhaustion, picas inf warmth, drowsiness and so on)
were too obvious to netd description A fitc or latch roots
crackled m the stove and ill the shades* s ot his lost kingdom
githered to play around his rocking ch-m as he do/ed off be-
tween that bia/e and the tremulous light of \ hide t arthenware
cresset, a bi iked idair iaiber life a Romm lamp, hanging
above a shelf where poor beady baubles md bits of naere be-
came nucioscopic olJurs warming m desperate battle He
woke up with a crimp in the neck it *he fust full cowbell of
dawn found his host outside, in a damp co r nu consigned to
the humble needs ot nitun , and bade the good yunhr (moun-
tain farmer) show him the shortest way to the pass “Til rouse
la/y Garh,” si id the farmer

A rude staircase ltd up to a lott The tanner placed his
gnailcd hand on the gnu led balustiade *na duccteJ tovard
the upper daikucss a guttural call ‘Gaih f Garh r> Although
given to both se*cs, the name is, strictly speaking a masculine
one, and the king expected to see emerge from the loit a
baie-kneed mountain lad like a tawnv angel Instead there ap-
peared a disheveled young hussv weiring onl\ a mans shirt
that came down to her pink shins and an ovei sized pair of

102

PALE FIRE

brogues. A moment later, as in a transformation act, she re-
appeared, her yellow hair still hanging lank and loose, but the
dirty shirt replaced by a dirty pullover, and her legs sheathed
in corduroy pants. She was told to conduct the stranger to a
spot from which he could easily reach the pass. A sleepy and
sullen expression blurred whatever appeal her snub-nosed
round face might have had for the local shepherds; but she
complied readily enough with her father's wish. His wife was
crooning an ancient song as she busied herself with pot and
pan.

Before leaving, the King asked his host, whose name was
Griff, to accept an old gold piece he chanced to have in his
pocket, the only money he possessed. Griff vigorously refused
and, still remonstrating, started the laborious business of un-
locking and unbolting two or three heavy doors. The King
glanced at the old woman, received a wink of approval, and
put the muted ducat on the mantelpiece, next to a violet sea-
shell against which was propped a color print representing an
elegant guardsman with his bare-shouldered wite — Karl the
Beloved, as he was twenty odd years before, and his young
queen, an angry young virgin W'ith cojl-black heir and ice-
blue eyes.

The stars had just faded. He followed the girl and a happy
sheepdog up the overgrown trail that glistened with the ruby
dew in the theatrical light of an alpine dawn. The very air
seemed tinted and glazed. A sepulchral chill emanated from
the sheer cliff along which the trail ascended, but on the op-
posite precipitous side, here and there between the tops of tir
trees growing below, gossamer gleams of sunlight w'ere be-
ginning to weave patterns of warmth. At the next turning this
warmth enveloped the fugitive, and a black butterfly came
dancing down a pebbly rake. The path narrowed still more
and gradually deteriorated amidst a jumble of boulders. The
girl pointed to the slopes beyond it. He nodded. “Now go
home,” he said. “I shall rest here and then continue alone.”

He sank down on the grass near a patch ot matted elfin-
wood and inhaled the bright air. The panting dog lay down
at his feet. Garh smiled for the first time. Zemblan mountain
girls are as a rule mere mechanisms of haphazard lust, and
Garh was no exception. As soon as she had settled beside him,
she bent over and pulled over and off her tousled bead the
thick gray sweater, revealing her naked back and blancmangS

Commentary 103

breasts, and flooded her embarrassed companion with all the
acridity of ungroomed womanhood She was about to proceed
with her stripping but he stopped her with a gesture and got
up He thanked her for all her kindness He patted the in-
nocent dog; and without turning once, wdh a springy step, the
King started to walk up the turfy incline

He was still chuckling over the wcnchS discomfiture when
he came to the tremendous stones ^amassed around a small
lake which he had reached once or twice from the rocky Kron-
berg side man) years ago Now he glimpsed the flash of the
pool tbiough the aperture of a natural vault, a masterpiece of
eiosion The vault was low and he bent his head to step down
tow aid the water In its limpid tintarron ne saw his scarlet
lcflection bu% oddly enough, owing to what seemed to be at
first blush an optu al illusion this reflection was not at his feet
but muJi further, moreover, it was accompimcd by the rip-
ple-warped reflection of a ledge that jutted high above his
present position And finally, the strain on the magic of the
image caused it to snap as his red-sweatered, led-capped dotU
blegange* turned and vanished, wneicis he, the observer, re-
mained immobile He now tJvanttd to the very hp of the
water ^ru wa< met there by a rename leftcction, much
Idtgei ad cJt ircr than tnc one that had deceived him He
skirted tl e pool High up in the Uccp-bl je sky jutted the empty
ledge wheicon i counts fcit king nad u»st stood A shivei of
alhar (uncontrollable fear caused b\ ches) ran between his
sbouldcrbladcs 11c murmured a familial pia>er, crossed him-
selt, ai d rcsolutch proceeded tow ird the pass At a high point
upon ai* adjacent ridge x \u mnamn ( \ hi ap of stones erected
as a memento of an ascent) had donned a cap ol red wool in
his honor He trudged on Bui his heart was a conical ache
poking him trom below in the throat, and after a while he
stopped again to take stock ot conditions *nd decide whether
to scramble up the steep debus slept m front of him or to
strike oft to the right along a strip of grass, £av with genetians,
that went winding between hefnned iCtks He elected the
second loute and m due course reached the pass

Great fallen crags diversified the w lyside The mppern
(domed hills or ‘ reeks”) to the south were bioken by a rock
and grass slope into light and shadow Northward melted the
green, gray, bluish mountains — lalkbeig with its hood of
snow, Mutrabeig with the fan of its avalanche, Paberg (ML

PALE F IK E

104

Peacock) t and others, — separated by narrow dim valleys with
intercalated cotton-wool bits of cloud that seemed placed be-
tween the receding sets of ridges to prevent their flanks from
scraping against one another. Beyond them, in the final blue,
loomed Mt. Glitterntin, a serrated edge of bright foil; and
southward, a tender haze enveloped more distant ridges which
led to one another in an endless array, through every grade of
soft evanescence.

The pass had been reached, granite and gravity had been
overcome; but the most dangerous stretch lay ahead. West-
ward a succession of heathered slopes led down to the shining
sea. Up to this moment the mountain had stood between him
and the gulf; now he was exposed to that arching blaze. He
began the descent.

Three hours later he trod level ground. Two old women
working in an orchard unbent jn slow motion and stared after
him. He had passed the pine groves of Boscobel and was ap-
proaching the quay of Blawick, when a black police car turned
out of a transverse road and pulled up next to him: “The joke
has gone too far,” said the driver. “One hundred clowns arc
packed in Onhava jail, and the ex-King should be among them.
Our local prison is much too small for more kings. The next
masquerader will be shot at sight What’s >our real name,
Charlie?” “I'm British. Fm a tourist,” said the King. “Well,
anyway, take off that ied fufa. And the cap, Give them here.”
He tossed the things in the back of the car and drove off.

The king walked on; the top of his blue pajamas tucked into
his skiing pants might easily pass for a fancy shirt. There was
a pebble in his lett shoe but he was too fagged out to do any-
thing about it.

He recognized the seashore restaurant where many years
earlier he had lunched incognito with two amusing, very
amusing, sailors. Several heavily armed Extremists were
drinking beer on the geranium-lined veranda, among the iou-
tine vacationists, some of whom were busy writing to distant
friends. Through the geraniums, a gloved hand gave the King
a picture postcard on which he found scribbled: Proceed to
R.C. Bon voyage! Feigning a casual stroll, he reached the end
of the embankment.

It was a lovely breezy afternoon with a western horizon like
a luminous vacuum that sucked in one’s eager heart. The King,
now at the most critical point of his journey, looked about him,

Commentary 105

scrutinizing the few promenadcrs and trying to decide which
of them might be police agents in disguise, ready to pounce
upon him as soon as he vaulted the parapet and made for the
Rippleson Caves. Only a single sail dyed a royal red marred
with some human interest the marine expanse. Nitra and Indra
(meaning “inner” and “outer”) > two black islets that seemed
to address each other in cloaked parley, were being photo-
graphed from the parapet by a Russian tourist, thickset, many-
chinned, with a general’s fleshy nape. His faded wife, wrapped
up floatingly in a flowery echarpe , remarked in singsong Mos-
covan “Every time J see that kind of frightful disfigurement I
can't help thinking of Nina’s boy. War is an awful thing.”
“War."* querier her consoit. “That must have been the ex-
plosion at the Glass Works in 1951 — not war.” They slowly
walked past the King in the direction he had come from. On a
sidewalk bench, lacing the *ea, a man with his emtehes beside
him was reading the Onhava Post which featured on the first
page Odon in an Extremist uniform and Odon in the part of
the Merman Incredible as it may seem the palace guard had
never realized that identity before. Now a goodly sum was
oflered for his capture. Rhythmically the waves lapped the
shingle. The newspaper reader’s face had been atrociously in-
jured in the recently mentioned explosion, and ail the art of
plastic surgery had only icsultcd in a hideous tessellated tex-
ture with parts of pattern and parts ot outline seeming to
change, to fuse or to separate, like fluctuating cheeks and chins
in a distortive mirror.

The short stretch of beach between the restaurant at the be-
ginning of the promenade and the granite rocks at its end was
almost empty: far to the left three fishermen were loading a
rowboat with kelp-brown nets, and directly under the side-
walk, an elderly woman wearing a polka-dotted dress and
having for headgear a cocked newspaper (Ex-King Sfen — )
sat knitting on the shingle with her back to the street. Her
bandaged legs were stretched out on the sand; on one side of
her lay a pair of carpet slippers and on the other a ball of red
wool, the leading filament of which she would tug at every
now and then with the immemorial elbow jerk of a Zemblan
knitter to give a turn to her yarn clew and slacken the thread.
Finally, on the sidewalk a little girt in a ballooning skirt was
clumsily but energetically clattering about on roller skates.
Could a dwarf in the police force pose as a piglailed child?

106

PALE FIRE

Waiting for the Russian couple to recede, the King stopped
beside the bench The mosaic-faced man folded his newspaper,
and one second before he spoke (m the neutral interval be-
tween smoke pufl and detonation), the King knew it was Odon
“All one could do at short notice,” said Odon, plucking at his
cheek to display how the varicolored semi-transparent film
adhered to his face, altering its contours according to stress
“A polite person, 0 he added, “does not, norm illy, examine too
closely a poor fellow’s disfiijurement ” “I was looking for
shpiks fplainclothesmen]” said the kmg “All day,” said Odon,
“they have been patrolling the quay Thev ire dining at
present ' ‘I’m thirsty and hungry,’ said the kmp “ There s
some stuff m the boat Let those Russians vanish 1 he child we
can ignore ” What about that woman on the beacV ’ ‘That’*
young Baron Mandevil — chap who had tint dud list veir
let’s go now " “C ouldn t we take him too 0 ‘ Wouldn't come
— got a wife md a baby Come on, C hailie come on. Your
Majesty ” “He was my rhrone page ou C oronauon 1) ly Ihus
chatting, they rt ached the Rippleson Caves I trust the reader
has enjoyed tms note

Line 16? With his pure tongue, ek

This is a singularly roundabout wa) o« Itscnb ig a r si ntry
girl’s shy kiss but the whole passage is veiy haroqu* My own
boyhood was too happ> and hialthy to contain am thing re-
motely like the fainting fits experienced by Shade It must have
been with him a nnld fotni of epikpsy, a dernlmcnt of tht
nerves at the same snot, on th„ same curvi ol the liacks, cveiy
day, for several weels, until nature repaued the damage Who
can forget the goodnatured faces, glossy \*nh sweat, of cop-
per-chested railway workers leming upon thai spades and
following with ther ey*» the windows of rhe great express
cautiously gliding bv ?

Line lo7 There was a time, etc

The poet began Canto Two (on his fouiteenth cird) on
July 5, his sixtieth birthday (see note to line 181, today ).
My slip — change to nxty-first

Line 169 survival alter death

See note to line 549.

Commentary 107

Line 171: A great conspiracy

For almost a whole year after the King’s escape the Ex-
tremists remained convinced that he and Odon had not left
Zembla. The mistake can be only ascribed to the streak of
stupidity that fatally runs through the most competent tyranny.
Airborne machines and everything connected with them cast a
veritable spell over the minds of our new rulers whom kind
history had suddenly given a boxful of these zipping and
zooming gadgets to plan with. That an important fugitive
would not perform by air the act of fleeing seemed to them in-
conceivable. Within minutes after the King and the actor had
clattered down the backstairs of the Royal Theater, every wing
in the sky and on the ground had been accounted lor — such
was the efficiency of the government. During the next weeks
not one private or commercial plane was allowed to take off,
and the inspection of transients became so rigorous and
length) that international lines decided to cancel stopovers at
Onhava. rherc were some casualties A crimson balloon was
enthusiastically shot down and the aeronaut (a well-known
meteorologist) drowned in the Gulf of Surprise A pilot from
a 1 apland >»ase flying on a mission oi mercy got lost in the fog
and was so badly harassed by Zemblan fighters that he settled
atop a mountain peak. Some excuse tor all this could be found.
The illusion of the King s presence in the wilds ot Zembla was
kept up by royalist plotters who decoyed entire regiments into
searching the mountains and woods ot our rugged peninsula.
The government spent a ludicrous amount ot energy on
solemnly screening the hundreds of impostors packed in the
country’s jails. Most of them clowned their vay back to free-
dom; a few, alas, fell. 1 hen, in the spring of the following year,
a stunning piece ot news came from abroad. The Zemblan
actor Odon was dnecting the making ot o cinema picture in
Pans!

It was now correctly conjectured that it Odon had fled, the
King had fled too. At an extraordinary session ot the Extremist
government there was passed from hand to hand, in grim
silence, a copy of a French newspaper with the headline:
L’ex-roi de Zembla est-ti a P*ris? Vindictive exasperation
rather than state strategy moved the secret organization of
which Gradus was an obscure member to plot the destruction
of the royal fugitive. Spiteful thugs! They may be compared to

108 P A L E F I R E

hoodlums who itch to torture the invulnerable gentleman
whose testimony clapped them in prison for life. Such con-
victs have been known to go beserk at the thought that their
elusive victim whose very testicles they crave to twist and tear
with their talons, is sitting at a pergola feast on a sunny island
or fondling some pretty young creature between his knees in
serene security — and laughing at theml One supposes that no
hell can be worse than the helpless rage they experience as the
awareness of that implacable sweet mirth reaches them and
suffuses them, slowly destroying their brutish brains. A group
of especially devout Extremists calling themselves the Shadows
had got together and swore to hunt down the King and kill him
wherever he might be. They were, in a sense, the shadow twins
of the Karlists and indeed several had cousins or even brothers
among the followers of the King. No doubt, the origin of
cither group could be traced to various reckless lituals in stu-
dent fraternities and military clubs, and their development
examined in terms of fads and anti-fads; but whereas an ob-
jective historian associates a romantic and noble glamor with
Karlism, its shadow group must strike one as something defi-
nitely Gothic and nasty. The grotesque figure of Gradus, a
cross between bat and crab, was not much odder than many
other Shadows, such as, for example, Node, Odon’s epileptic
half brother who cheated at cards, 01 a mad Mandevil who
had lost a leg in trying to make anti-matter. Gradus had long
been a member ot all sorts of jejune leftist organizations. He
had never killed, though coming rather close to it several times
in his gray lite. He insisted later that when he found himself
designated to track down and murder the King, the choice was
decided by a show ot cards — but let us not forget that it w r as
Nodo who shuffled and dealt them out. Perhaps our man’s
foreign origin secretly prompted a nomination that would not
cause any son of Zembla to incur the dishonor of actual
regicide. We can well imagine the scene: the ghastly neon
lights of the laboratory, in an annex of the Glass Works, where
the Shadows happened to hold their meeting that night; the
ace of spades lying on the tiled floor; the vodka gulped down
out of test tubes; the many hands clapping Gradus on his
round back, and the dark exultation of the man as he received
those rather treacherous congratulations. We place this fatidic
moment at 0:05, July 2, 1959 — which happens to be also the

Commentary 109

date upon which an innocent poet penned the first lines of hia
last poem.

Was Gradus really a suitable person for the job? Yes and
no. One day in his early youth, when he worked as messenger
boy for a large and depressing firm of cardboard box manu-
facturers, he quietly helped three companions to ambush a
local lad whom they wished to beat up for winning a motor-
cycle at a fair. Young Gradus obtained an axe and directed the
felling of a tree: it crashed improperly, though, not quite
blocking the country lane down which their carefree prey used
to ride in the growing dusk. The poor lad whizzing along to-
ward the spot where those roughs crouched was a slim deli-
cate-luoking Lorrainer, and one must have been vile indeed to
begrudge him his harmless enjoyment. Curiously enough, while
they were lying in wait, our future iegicide fell asleep in a
ditch and thus missed the brief alfray during which two of the
attackers were knucklcdusted and knocked out by the brave
Lorrainer, and the third run over and crippled for life. m

Gradus never became a real success in the glass business to
which he turned again and again between his wine-selling and
pamphlet-printing jobs. He started as a maker of Cartesian
devils — imps ol bottle glass bobbing up and down in methylate-
filied tubes hawked during Catskin Week on the boulevards.
He also worked as teazer, and later as flasher, at governmental
factories — and was, I believe, more or less responsible for the
remarkably ugly red-and-amber windows in the great public
lavatory at rowdy but colorful Kalixhaven where the sailors
are. He claimed to have improved the glitter and rattle of the
so-called feuilles-d'alarme used by grape growers and orchard-
men to scare the birds. 1 have staggered the notes referring to
him in such a fashion that the first (see note to line 17 where
some of his other activities are adumbrated) is the vaguest
while those that follow become gradually clearer as gradual
Gradus approaches in space and time.

Mere springs and coils produced the inward movements of
our clockwork man. He might be termed a Puritan. One es-
sential dislike, formidable in its simplicity, pervaded his dull
soul: he disliked injustice and deception. He disliked their
union — they were always together — with a wooden passion
that neither had, nor needed, words to express itself. Such a
dislike should have deserved praise had it not been a by-

110

PALE FIRE

product of the man’s hopeless stupidity. He called unjust and
deceitful everything that surpassed his understanding. He wor-
shiped general ideas and did so with pedantic aplomb. The
generality was godly, the specific diabolical. If one person was
poor and the other wealthy it did not matter what precisely
had ruined one or made the other rich: the difference itself was
unfair, and the poor man who did not denounce it was as
wicked as the rich one who ignored it. People who knew too
much, scientists, writers, mathematicians, crystalographers and
so forth, were no better than kings or priests: they all held an
unfair share of power of which others were cheated. A plain
decent fellow should constantly be on the watch tor some piece
of clever knavery on the part of nature and neighbor.

The Zemblan Revolution provided Gradus with satisfac-
tions but also produced frustrations. One highly irritating
episode seems retrospectively most significant as belonging to
an order of things that Gradus should have learned to expect
but never did. An especially brilliam impersonator of the
King, the tennis ace Julius Steinmann (son ot the well-known
philanthropist), had eluded for several months the police who
had been driven to the limits of exasperation by his mimicking
to perfection the voice of Charles the Beloved m a series of
underground radio speeches deriding the government. When
finally captured he was tried bv a special commission, of
which Gradus was member, and condemned to death. The
firing squad bungled their job, and a little later the gallant
young man was found recuperating trom bis wounds at a
provincial hospital. W hen Gradus learned of this, he flew into
one of his rare rages — not because the fact presupposed
royalist machinations, but because the clean, honest, ordeily
course of death had been interfered with m an unclean, dis-
honest, disorderly manner. Without consulting anybody he
rushed to the hospital, stormed in, located Julius in a crowded
ward and managed to fire twice, both times missing, before the
gun was wrested from him by a hefty male nulse. He rushed
back to headquarters and returned with a dozen soldiers but
his patient had disappeared.

Such things rankle — but what can Gradus do? The huddled
fates engage in a great conspiracy against Gradus. One notes
with pardonable glee that his likes are never granted the ulti-
mate thrill of dispatching their victim themselves. Oh, surely,
Gradus is active, capable, helpful, often indispensable. At the

Commentary 111

foot of the scaffold, on a raw and gray morning, it is Gradus
who sweeps the night’s powder snow off the narrow steps; but
his long leathery face will not be the last one that the man who
must mount those steps is to see in this world. It is Gradus who
buys the cheap fiber valise that a luckier guy will plant, with a
time bomb inside, under the bed of a former henchman. No*
body knows better than Gradus how to set a trap by means of
a fake advertisement, but the rich old widow whom it hooks is
courted and slain by another. When the fallen tyrant is tied,
naked and howling, to a plank in the public square and killed
piecemeal by the people who cut slices out, and eat them, and
distribute his living body among themselves (as I read when
young in a storv about an Italian despot, which made of me a
vegetarian for life), Gradus docs not take part in the infernal
sacrament: he points out the right instrument and directs the
carving.

All this is as it should be; the world needs Gradus. But
Gradus should not kill kings. Vinogradus should never, ne^er
provoke God. Leningradus should not aim his pea-shooter at
people even in dreams, because if he does, a pair of colossally
thick, abnormally hairy arms will hug him fiom behind and
squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.

Lira 17?: books and people

In a black pocketbook that f fortunately have with me I
find, jotted down, heie and there, among various extracts that
had happened to please me (a footnote from Boswell’s Life of
Dr. Johnson , the inenptious on the trees in Wordsraith’s
famous avenue, a quotation from St. Augustine, and so on), a
few samples of John Shade’s convention which 1 had col-
lected in order to refer to them in the presence of people
whom my friendship with the poet might interest or annoy.
His and my reader will, 1 trust, excuse r.ie for breaking the
orderly course of these comments and letting my illustrious
friend speak for himself.

Book reviewers being mentioned, he said: “I have never
acknowledged piinted piaise though sometimes I longed to
embrace the glowing image of this or that paragon of discern-
ment; and I have never bothered to lean out of my window
and empty my skoramis on some poor hack’s pate. I regard
both the demolishment and the rave with like detachment.”
Kinbote: “I suppose you dismiss the firsd as the blabber of a

112

PALE FIRE

blockhead and the second as a kind soul’s friendly act?” Shade:
"‘Exactly.”

Speaking of the Head of the bloated Russian Department,
Ptof. Pnin, a regular martinet in regard to his underlings
(happily, Prof. Botkin, who taught in another department,
was not subordinated to that grotesque “perfectionist”) : “How
odd that Russian intellectuals should lack all sense of humor
when they have such marvelous humorists as Gogol, Dostoev-
ski, Chekhov, Zoshchenko, and those joint authors of genius
Ilf and Petrov.”

Talking of the vulgarity of a certain burly acquaintance of
ours: “The man is as corny as a cook-out chef apron.” Kin-
bote (laughing) : “Wonderful!”

The subject ol teaching Shakespeare at college level having
been introduced: “First of all, dismiss ideas, and social back-
ground, and train the freslinian to shiver, to get drunk on the
poetry of Hamlet or Lear , to read with his spine and not with
his skull.” Kmbote: “You appreciate particularly the purple
passages?” Shade: “Yes, my dear Charles, I roll upon them as
a grateful mongrel on a spot of turf loulcd by a Great Dane.”

The respective impacts and penetrations of Marxism and
Freudism being talked of, I said: “The worst of two false
doctrines is alwavs that which is harder to eradicate.” Shade*
“No, Charlie, there are simpler criteria: Marxism needs a
dictator, and a dictator needs a secret police, and that is the
end of the world; but the Freudian, no matter how stupid, can
still cast his vote at the poll, even if he is pleased to call it
(smiling] political pollination

Of students’ papers: “I am generally very benevolent [said
Shade]. But there are certain trifles I do not forgive.” kinbote:
“For instance?” “Not having read the requited hook. Having
read it like an idiot, looking in it for symbols: example: ‘The
author uses the striking image green Laves because green is
the symbol ot happiness and frustration.’ Iam also in the habit
of lowering a student’s mark catastrophically if he uses ‘simple’
and ‘sincere’ in a commendatory sense; examples: ‘Shelley’s
style is always very simple and good’; or ‘Yeats is always sin-
cere.’ This is widespread, and when I hear a critic speaking of
an author’s sincerity I know that either the critic or the author
is a fool.” Kinbote: “But I am told this manner of thinking is
taught in high school?” “That’s where the broom should begin
to sweep. A child should have thirty specialists to teach him

Commentary 1 13

thirty subjects, and not one harassed schoolmarra to show him
a picture of a rice field and tell him this is China because she
knows nothing about China, or anything else, and cannot tell
the difference between longitude and latitude.” Kinbote: M Ye*.
1 agree.”

Line 181. Today

Namely, July 5, 1959, 6th Sunday after Trinity. Shade be-
gan writing Canto Two '‘early in the moiniug” (thus noted at
the top of Card 14). He continued (down to line 208) on and
off throughout the day. Most ot the evening and a part of the
night were devoted to what his favorite eighteenth-century
writes have termed “the Bustle and Vanity of the World.”
Alter the last guest had gone (on a bicycle), and the ashtrays
had been emptied, all the windows weic dark for a couple of
houis, but then, at about "1 a.m , [ saw fiom my upstairs bath-
room that the poetiiad gone back to his desk in the lilac light
ot nis den, and this nocturnal session brought the canto to line
230 (card l'*). On another trip to the bathroom an hour ancT a
hdf later, at sunrise, i loimd the light transfened to the bed-
room, and smiled indulgently, for, according to my deduc-
tions only two nights had passed since the thiec-thousand-
r nc-hundred-nmcty-ninth time — bin no matter. A few minutes
later all .vas Milid dai ^ ness again, and I went back to bed

On Jul> 5th, at noontime, m the oilier heraispheie, on the
lam-swept tarmac oi ihc Onhava an field, Gradus, holding a
French passport, walked towards a Russian commercial plane
bound for Copenhagen, and tins ev«.nt synchronized with
Shade's starting in the eaily mormng ( Atlantic seaboard time)
to compose, or to set down alter composing m bed, the
opening lines of Canto Two. When almost twenty -four hours
later he got to line 230, Giadus, after a refreshing night at the
summer house of our consul in Copenhagen, an important
Shadow, had entered, with the Shadow, a clothes store in
order to conform to his description m later notes (to lines 286
and 408). Migraine again worse today

As to my own activities, they were I am afraid most un-
satisfactory fiom all points of view — emotional, creative, and
social. That jinxy streak had started on the eve when I had
been kind enough to offei a young friend — a candidate for my
third ping-pong table who after a sensational series of traffic
violations had been deprived of his driving license— to take

114 PALE FIRE

him, in my powerful Kramler, all the way to his parents*
estate, a little matter of two hundred miles. In the course of an
all-night party, among crowds of strangers — young people, old
people, cloyingly perfumed girls — in an atmosphere of fire-
works, barbecue smoke, horseplay, jazz music, and auroral
swimming, I lost all contact with the silly boy, was made to
dance, was made to sing, got involved in the most boring
bibble-babble imaginable with various relatives of the child,
and finally, in some inconceiv *ble manner, found myself trans-
ported to a different party on a diffeient estate, where, after
some indescribable parlor games, in which my beard was
nearly snipped off, I had a fruit-and-rice breakfast and was
taken by my anonymous host, a drunken old fool in tuxedo
and riding breeches, on a stumbling round ol his stables. Upon
locating my Car (off the road, in a pine grove), J tossed out of
the driver’s seat a pair of soggy swimming trunks and a girls
silver slipper. The brakes had aged overnight, and 1 soon ran
out of gas on a desolate stretch of road. Six o’clock was being
chimed by the clocks of Wordsmith College, when l reached
Arcady, swearing to myself never to be caught like that again
and innocently looking forward to the solace of a quiet eve-
ning with my poet. Only when I saw the beribboned flat carton
I had placed on a chair in my hallway did ] realize that I had
almost missed hi<* birthdav.

Some time ago 1 bad noticed that date on the jacket of one
of his books; had pondeicd the awful decrepitude of his
breakfast attire; had playfully measured my arm against his;
and had bought for him m Washington an utterly goigeous silk
dressing gown, a veritable dragon skin of oriental chronus, fit
for a samurai; and this was what the carton contained.

Hurriedly I shed my clothes and, roaring my favorite hymn,
took a shower. My versatile gardener, while administering to
me a much-needed rubdown, informed me that the Shades
were giving that night a big “buffet” dinner, and that Senator
Blank (an outspoken statesman very much in the news and a
cousin of John’s) was expected.

Now there is nothing a lonesome man relishes more than an
impromptu biithday party, and thinking — nay, feeling certain
—that my unattended telephone had been ringing all day, I
blithely dialed the Shades’ number, and of course it was Sybil
who answered.

“Bon soir, Sybil.”

Commentary 1 IS

“Oh hullo, Charles Had a nice trip

“Well, to tell the truth — ”

“Look, I know you want John but he is resting right now,
and I'm frightfully busy He’ll call you hack later, okay?”

“I ater when — tonight?”

“No, tomorrow, I guess There goes that doorbell. Bye-
bye "

Strange Why should Sybil have to bsten to doorbells when,
besides the maid and the cook, two white-coated hired boys
were aiound* False pride prevented me fiom doing what 1
should have done — taken my royal gift undti my arm and
serenely marched over to that inhospitable house Who knows
— I n ight ha\e be^n rewarded at the back door with a drop of
kitchen cherry I still hoped there had been a mist ike, and
Shade would telephone It was a hitter wait, and the only
effect that the bottl of ch mipugue T or ink ill alone now at
this window, now it that, had on me was a bud crapula (hang*
over)

From behind t J* ipery, from behind box nee, through
t>e polden \cil ol evening and thiough the black lacery of
night, 1 kept witching that hwn that davi, that fanlight,
tho^e jewtl bright w ndows Ihc sun hid not \el c et when, at
i quaitu p'ld s veil 1 heard *hc first guests cir Oh, I saw
them all I mw i it ent Dr Suiton l &now\ -headed, perfectly
o\A little gentle in in arrive in i lowering lord with his tall
daughter Mrs Starr a war widow 1 saw a couple later identi-
fied foi me as Mr Colt, a lot il hw>cr, ind his wife, whose
Plundering t adilhc had entered n»\ dineway before rc-
Ueatu g in a fiuiry of luminous met ation 1 saw a world-
famous tld writer bent under the incubus v>f literary honors
and his own prolific mediocrity, dime in a taxi out of the dim
times ol yoie when vShade and Lc had been icint editors of a
little reviev\ l s iw Fnnk, the Shades hands man, depart in the
station wagon I saw a retired professor of ornithology walk
up from the highway wheic he had illegally parked his car I
saw, ensconced in their tmv Pulev, manned by her boy-hand-
some tousle-haircd gni friend, the patroness of the arts who
had sponsored Aurt Maud’s 1 ist exhibition 1 saw I rank re-
turn with the New Wye antiquarian, puibtiud Mr Kaplun,
and his wife, a dilapidated eagle 1 saw a Korean graduate
student m dinner jacket come on a bicycle, and the college
president in baggy suit come on foot 1 saw, w the peiformance

116

PALE FIRE

of their ceremonial duties, in light and shadow, and from win-
dow to window, where like Martians the martinis and high-
balls cruised, the two white-coated youths from the hotel
school, and realized that I knew well, quite well, the slighter of
the two. And finally, at half past eight (when, I imagine, the
lady of the house had begun to crack her finger joints as was
her impatient wont) a long black limousine, officially glossy
and rather funereal, glided into the aura of the drive, and
while the fat Negro chauffeur hastened to open the car door,
I saw, with pity, my poet emerge from his house, a white
flower in his buttonhole and a grin of welcome on his liquor-
flushed face.

Next morning, as soon as I saw Sybil drive away to fetch
Ruby the maid who did not sleep in the house, I crossed over
with the prettily and reproachfully wrapped up carton. In
front of their garage, on the ground, I noticed a buchmann , a
little pillar of library books which Sybil had obviously for-
gotten there I bent towards them under the incubus of curi-
osity: they were mostly by Mr. Faulkner; and the next moment
Sybil was back, her tires scrunching on the gravel right behind
me. I added the hooks to my gift and placed the whole pile in
her lap. That was nice ot me — but what was that carton? Just
a present for John. A present? Well, was it not his birthday
yesterday? Yes, it was, but after all are noi birthdays mere
conventions? Conventions or not, but it w T as my birthday too
— small difference ot sixteen years, that’s all. Oh my! Con-
gratulations. And how did the party go? Well, you know what
such parties are (here I reached in my pocket for another
book — a book she did not expect). Yes, what aie thev? Oh,
people whom you’ve known all your life and simply must in-
vite once a year, men like Ben Kaplun and Dick Colt with
whom we went to school, and that Washington cousin, and the
fellow whose novels you and John think so phony. We did not
ask you because we knew how tedious you find such affairs.
This was my cue.

“Speaking of novels,” I said, “you remember we decided
once, you, your husband and I, that Proust’s rough master-
piece was a huge, ghoulish fairy tale, an asparagus dream,
totally unconnected with any possible people in any historical
France, a sexual travestissement and a colossal farce, the
vocabulary of genius and its poetry, but no more, impossibly
rude hostesses, please let me speak, and even ruder guests,

Commentary 117

mechanical Dostoevskian rows and Tolstoian nuances of snobr
bishness repeated and expanded to an unsufferable lengthy
adorable seascapes, melting avenues, no, do not interrupt me,
light and shade effects rivaling those of the greatest English
poets, a flora of metaphors, described — by Cocteau, I think—*
as ‘a mirage of suspended gardens,’ and, I have not yet finished*
an absurd, rubber-and-wire romance between a blond young
blackguard (the fictitious Marcel), and an improbable jeime
fille who has a pasted-on bosom, Vronski's (and Lyovin’s)
thick neck, and a cupid’s buttocks for cheeks; but — and now
let me finish sweetly — we were wrong, Sybil, we were wrong
in denying our little beau tenebreux the capacity of evoking
‘human interest’: it is there, is is there — maybe a rather
eighteenth-centuryish, or even seventeenth-century ish, brand,
but it is there. Please, dip or redip, spider, into his book
[offering it], you will find a pretty marker in it bought in
France, I want John to keep it. Au revoir t Sybil, I must go
now. I think my telephone is ringing *'

I am a very sly Zemblan. Just in case , 1 had brought wim
me in my pocket the third and last volume of the Bibliotheque
de la Pltiade edition, Paris, 1954, of Proust's work, wherein I
had marked certain passages on pages 269-271, Mme. de Morte-
mart, having decided ihat Mme. de Valcourt would not be
among the “elected” at her soiree, intended to send her a note
on the next day saying “Dear Edith, I miss you, last night 1
did not expect you too much (Edith would wonder: how could
she at all, since she did not invite me?) because I know you
are not overfond of this sort of parties which, if anything,
bore you.”

So much for John Shade’s last birthday.

Lines 181-182: waxwings . cicadas

The bird of lines 1-4 and 131 is again with us. It will re-
appear in the ultimate line of the poem; and another cicada,
leaving its envelope behind, will sins triumphantly at lines
236-244.

Line 189: Starover Blue

See note to line 627. This reminds one of the Royal Game
of the Goose, but played here with little airplanes of painted
tin: a wild-goose game, rather (go to square 209),

118

PALE HRE

Line 209 gradual decay

Spacetime itself is decay, Gradus is fl\mg west; he has
reached gray-blue Copenhagen (see note to 1 8 1 ) After tomor-
row (July 7) he will proceed to Pans He has sped through
this verse and is gone — presently to darken our pages again

Lines 213-214 A syllogism

This mav please a bo) Later in life we learn that we are
those “others *

Line 230 a domestic ghost

Shades former sccrelan, Jane Provost, whom 1 recently
looked up in Chicago, told me about H izcl cons»derabi\ more
than her father did, he effected not to speik ot his dead
daughter, and since 1 did not foresee this work or niquirj and
comment, 1 did not urge him lo t ilk on the <uhjtU nml un-
burden himself to me Irue, in thi<> canto he his unburdened
himself preUv thoroughly, and his picture of Hv ‘1 is quite
clear and complete nnybe a Jittlc too complete, anbiteuom-
cally, since the readei emuot help tecumr thit it h<is hem *
panded and elaborated to the detrimvPt ot u^tun other r»cher
and rarer matters ousted by it But 3 commentators obliga-
tions cannot be shirked, however dull the information he nuM
collect and umvey Hence this note

It appears tha in tie beginning o f 1050 long before the
bain mcident (see note to line 347), sixteen-' e u -old HdZ'l
was involved m some appalling fc psychokmi tic m nntest itmns
that lasted for nearly a month Initiallj , one g ifbc rs, the pol-
tergeist meart to impregnate the disturbance with the identity
of Aunt Maud who fnd just died, the first object to perform
was the basket in which she had once kept her half-paralv7cd
Skye terrier (the breed called in our country “weeping-willow
dog”). Sybil had had the animal destroyed soon after its
mistress's hospitalization, incurring the wrath of Hazel who
was beside herself with distress One morning this basket shot
out of the “intact” sanctuary (see lines 90-98) and traveled
along the corridor past the open dooi of the study, where
Shade was at work he saw it whizz by and spill its humble
contents* a ragged coverlet, a rubber bone, and a partly dis-
colored cushion Next day the scene of action switched to the
dining room where one of Aunt Maud’s oils (Cypress and

Commentary 119

Bat) was found to be turned toward the wall Other incidents
followed, such as short flights accomplished by her scrapbook
(see note to line 90) and, of course, ah kinds of knockmgs,
especially m the sanctuary, which would rouse Hazel from her,
no doubt, peaceful sltcp in the adjacent bedroom But soon the
poltergeist ran out of ideas in connection with Aunt Maud
and became, as it weie, more eclectic All the banal motions
that object^ .ire limited to m such cases, were gone through in
this one Saucepans crashed in the kitchen, a snowball was
found (perhaps, prematurely) in the icebox, once or twice
Sybil saw a plate sail bv like a discus and land safely on the
sofa: lamps kept lighting up m vanou* pirts of the house,
uiair^ waddled awa\ to assemble in the impassable pantry;
my*teriou r bit° ot string were found on the floor, invisible
nvtlcis st ggend down the staircase m the middle of the
right, and one winter morning Shade, upon rising and taking
1. <A a the wt'rtKr saw thit the l.ttle t ible fiom his *t udy
upon vvhicl he kept a Bib^e-like Webster open at M was
standing m a ^tatc oi shock outdoors on the snow (subhm-
nuJIy this may have participated m the m ikmg of lines 5-12)

I imegne, that durmg that period the Shades, or at least
J >hi Sh »dv, ^xnenenceo a >ensation of ocM instability as if
p its of the everyday smoothly running world had got un-
proved, and sou became aware tbit one ot your tires was
iJI ^g be^idt vou, or th-»t youi steering wNel had come off
My poor friend could not help regaling the dramatic fits of
hi> c irlv bovbood md wondering i r this was not a new genetic
\anant of the <arnt ihtine, prtsmed through procreation
Irving to hidf from neighbors these hornble and humiliating
phenomena vas not the least of Shidcs worries He was
terrified, md he was lacerated with pity Although never able
to cornci her, ihat flabby, feeble, clumsv and solemn girl, who
scemtd more interested than frightened, he ind Sybil never
doubted that in sonic extraordinary way she was the agent of
the disturbance which they saw as representing (f now quote
Jane P ) an outw lid extension or expulsion of msamty M
They could not do much about it, partly because they disliked
modern voodoo-psychiatrv, but mainly because they were
afraid of Hazel, and afraid to hurt her They had however a
secret interview with old-tashioned and learned Dr Sutton,
and this put them m better spirits They were contemplating
moving into another house or, more exactly, loudly saying to

120

PALE PIKE

each other, so as to be overheard by anyone who might be
listening, that they were contemplating moving, when all at
once the fiend was gone, as happens with the moikovctt, that
bitter blast, that colossus ot cold air that blows on our eastern
shores thioughout March, and then one morning you hear the
birds, and the flags hang flaccid, and the outlines of the world
are again in place. The phenomena ceased completely and
were, if not forgotten, at least never referred to; but how
curious it is that we do loX perceive a mysterious sign of
equation between the Hercules springing forth from a neurotic
child’s weak frame and the boisterous ghost ot Aunt Maud;
how curious that our rationality feels satisfied when we plump
for the first explanation, though, actually, the scientific and
the supernatural the muacle of the muscle and the muacle ot
the mind, are both inexplicable as are all the ways of Our Lord.

Line 231: How ludicrous, etc.

A beautiful \ana*it, with one curious gap, brimhes oil at
this point m the diaft (dated July 6)

Strange Other Woi Id where all our still-boin dwell,

And pets icvivcd, and invalids, grown well.

And minds that died before arriving there
Poor old man Swilt poor pooi R uidehure

What might that dash stand foi° Unless Shade gav<. pro-
sodic value to the mute e m “Bdudeiuiie,“ which 1 am cjime
certain he would nevei have done in English veise f ci> “Ra-
belais, line 501), the name required here must scan as a
trochee. Among the names o( celebrated poets, patnteis, phi-
losophers, etc , known to have become insane or to have sunk
into senile imbecility, we find many suitable ones Was Shade
confronted by too much vanctv with nothing to help logic
choose and so left a bhnk, rel\mg upon the mysterious organic
force that rescues poets to fill it in at its own convenience 9 Or
was there something else — some obscure intuition, some pro-
phetic scruple that prevented him from spelling out the name
of an eminent man who happened to be an intimate friend of
his? Was he perhaps playing safe because a reader in his
household might have objected to that paiticular name being
mentioned? And if it comes to that, why mention it at all in
this tragical context? Dark, disturbing thoughts.

Commentary

121

Line 238: empty emerald case

This, I understand, is the semitransparent envelope left on
a tree trunk by an adult cicada that has crawled up the trunk
and emerged. Shade said that he had once questioned a class
of three hundred students and only three knew what a cicada
looked like. Ignorant settlers had dubbed it “locust,” which is,
of course, a grasshopper, and the same absurd mistake has
been made by generations of translators of Lafontaine’s La
Cigale et la Fourmi (see lines 243-244). The cigale's com-
panion piece, the ant. is about to be embalmed in amber.

Inuring our sunset rambles, of which there were so many, at
least nine (according to my notes) in June, but dwindling to
two in the first three weeks of July (they shall be resumed
Elsewhere!) my friend Had a rather coquettish way of point-
ing out with the tip of his cane various curious natural objects.
jHe never tired ot illustrating by means of these examples the
extraordinary blend of Canadian Zone and Austral Zone*<hat
“obtained/’ as he put it, in that particular spot of Appalachia
where at our altitude of about 1 ,500 feet northern species of
birds, insects and plants commingled with southern repre-
sentatives As most literary celebrities. Shade did not seem to
realize that a humble admirer who has cornered at last and
has at last to himsell the inaccessible man of genius, is con-
siderably mote interested in discussing with him literature and
life than in being told that the ‘diana” (presumably a flower)
occurs in New Wye together with the “atlantis" (presumably
another flower), and things of that sort. I particularly remem-
ber one exasperating evening stroll (July 6) which my poet
granted me, with majestic generosity, in compensation for a
bad hurt (see, frequently see, note to line Ifcl), in recompense
for my small gift (which I do not think he ever used), and
with the sanction of his wife who made it a point to accom-
pany us part of the way to Dulwich Forest. By means of astute
excursions into natural history Shade kept evading me, me,
who was hysterically, intensely, uncontrollably curious to
know what portion exactly ot the Zemblan king’s adventures
he had completed in the course of the last four or five days.
My usual shortcoming, pride, prevented rfte from pressing him
with direct questions but I kept reverting to my own earlier
themes — the escape from the palace, the adventures in the
mountains — in order to force some confession from him. One

122

P A I E f IRE

would imagine that a poet, in the course of composing a long
and difficult piece, would simply jump at the opportunity of
talking about his triumphs and tribulations But nothing of the
sort! All I got in reply to my infinitely gentle and cautious in-
terrogations were such phrases as: “Yep It’s coming along
nicely,” or “Nope, I’m not talkin’/’ and finally he brushed me
off with a Tather offensive anecdote about King Altred who, it
was said, liked the stories of a Norwegian attendant he had
but drove him away when engaged in other business: ‘Oh,
there you are,” lude AH red would say to the gentle Norwegian
who had come to weave a subtly different variant of some old
Norse myth he had already related belore. "Ok thefc you are
again!” And thus it came to pas>, my dears, that a iabuleus
exile, a God-inspucd northern bard, is known <odn\ to Inghsh
schooIbo>s by the trivial nickname* Ohthcre

However* On a later occasion mv capricious and henpecked
friend was mmh kinder (see 10*0 to hue 80? ».

Line 240' ! Vial Englishman in Nice

The sea gulls of Wt are ml de id, of e mr>c Bui b\ in-
serting a notice m I he foultn 7 imc s one r ughl pjoeuic
the name of then hen *fac*or- -unless Slnde invent* d turn
When I visited N*ce i quirter of a century later there was, *n
lieu of ih it Englishman a local chaiacter, an old be ircied bum,
tolerated or abetted in a touri&h attraction, who stood like a
statue of Vcilame with an unfa^tidious sea enll peicbeu in
profile on his matred h nr Oi took naps in the public sun, com
fortably curled up with his buck to the lulling roll of the st-i,
on a promenade bench, under which ht had neitlv arranged
to dry, or ferment, multicolored gobbets ol undeterminable
Victuals on a newspaper Not many Englishmen walked there,
anyway, though l noticed quite a tew just cist o f Mentone, on
the quay where m honor of Queen Victoria a bulky monu-
ment, with difficulty embraced by the breeze, had been elected,
but not yet unshrouded, to replace the one the Germans had
taken away. Rather pathetically, the eager horn of her pet
nionoceros protruded through the shroud

Line 246. my dear

The poet addresses his wife The passage devoted to her
(lines 246-292) has its structural use as a transition to the
theme of his daughter, 1 can, however, state that when dear

Commentary 1 23

Sybil’s steps were heard upstairs, fierce and sharp, above our
heads, everything was not always “all right”!

Line 247 : Sybil

John Shade’s wife, n6e IrondeU (which comes not from a
little valley yielding iron ore but from the French for “swal-
low”). She was a few months his senior. J understand she
came of Canadian stock, as did Shade’s maternal grandmother
(a first cousin of Sybil’s grandfather, if I am not greatly mis-
taken).

From the very first I tried to behave with the utmost
courtesy toward my friend’s wife, and from the very first she
disliked and distrusted me. 1 w as to learn later that when
alluding to me in public she used to call me “an elephantine
tick; a king-sized botfly; i macaco worm; the monstrous para-
site of a genius.” I pardon her — her and everybody,

/ ine 770 * My dark Vanessa ^

It is vo like the heart of i scholar in search of a fond name
to pile a butterfly genus upon an Orphic divinity on top of the
inevitable allusion to Kawhomrigh, Father! In this connection
a couple of linns from one of Swift’s poems (which in these
backwoods I cannot locate) have stuck in my memory:

When, lo! Vanewa in her bloom
Advanced like Atalzntas star

As to the Vanessa butterfly, it wilt reappear in lines 993-995
(to which see note). Shade used to sa) that its Old English
name was The Red Admirable, later degraded to The Red
Admiral. It is one of the few butterflies i happen to be familiar
with. ZemMans call it harvalda (the heialdic one) possibly
because a recognizable figure of it is borne in the escutcheon
of the Dukes of Payn. In the autumn of certain years it used
to occur rather commonly in the Palace Gardens and visit the
Michaelmas daisies in company with a day-flying moth. I
have seen The Red Admirable feasting on oo/v plums and,
once, on a dead rabbit. It is a most frolicsome fly. An almost
tame specimen of it was the last natrnai object John Shade
pointed out to me as he walked to his doom (see, see now, my
note to lines 993-995).

1 notice a whiff ot Swift in some of my notes. 1 too am a

124

PALE FIRE

desponder in my nature, an uneasy, peevish, and suspicious
man, although 1 h ive my moments ot volatility and fou rire

Line 27 * We have been married forty jears
John Shade and Sybil Swallow (see note to lme 247) were
married m 19 1 9 exactlv three decades before King Charles
wed Disa, Duchess of Pa) n Since the very beginning of his
reign (1936-19^8) representatives of the nation, salmon fish-
ermen, non-union gh/iert mihttry groups, worned relatives,
and especially the Bishop of Yeskrve, a sanguineous and
saintly old man, had been doing their utmost to persuade him
to give up his copious but sterile pie isurcs and take a wiie It
was a mittei not of moi ility but oi succession As m the case
of some of his picduxssors, rough aldfrkings v ho burned for
boys, the tlerg\ blindly ignored oin young bichclors pu,m
habits, but wanted him to do what in cirlivi and even moK
reluctant (hallo b’d done i^e \ ni^M e*T ul law full /
engender an heir

He snv ninct en ye i-old Di^a for tho frst tine on *hc
festive night of ju\ the 5*n 1 0J 7 ^t a misked b II ^ s
uncle's palace She had mm n mile d<ess iwT rohs< bov
a httlc Knock Inced but !ri\v ind lew b, and alt i\ cJ\ «r
drove her and her coi *ms (t \o ” rusm* v Jp * ised is no ' t
girls 3 m bis divut rw com rt hi through s ut> to
the ticmendous ^irdiuiN illumination and the fickdt v n
the park, and the nu works and ihe pd upturned faces H
procrastinated for ilmosi t*e veirs but w is set upon b\ m
human!) eloquent ulvncrs ird tin illy ’ive m On tic eve ot
his wedding Ik [ i cJ iuo t of the night locked up ill ilont m
the coJd \astncss ol the Onhu\ i Cathedral Spij»» aidMmgs
looked at him fi mi the rubv-md am thvst wmuows Never
had he so lerventiv isked God toi gu dircc and stiengtli fsec.
further m) note to hues 433 134)

After lme 27 4 there i* a iaLe sort in the diaft

I like my nmie Mnde, Onb~t, almost man”

In Spanish

One regrets that the poet did not puisne this theme — and
spare his reader the emb irrassing intimacies thn follow

Line 28o A jet’s pink trail above the sunset fire
I, too, was wont to draw my poet’s attention to the idyllic

Commentary 125

beauty of airplanes in the evening sky- Who could have
guessed that on the very dav (July 7) Shade penned this
lambent line (the last one on his twentv-third card) Gradus,
alias Degre, had flown from Copenhagen to Pans, thus Com-
pleting the second lap oi his sinister journey’ Even in Arcady
am 1, says Death m the tombal scripture.

The activities ot Gradus in Paris had been rather neatly
planned by the Shadows They were perfectly nght in as-
suming that not only Odon but our former consul in Pam,
the late Oswin Brctwit, would know where to find the King.
r lhev decided to have Gudus try Bretwit first. Tint gentle-
run fnd a flat in Mcudon where he dwelt alone, seldom go-
ing anywhere except the National Library (where he read
theosophic works and solved ihess problems m old news-
p ipeis) and did not visitors The Shadows' neat plan

spiling irom a piece of link Suspecting that Gradus lacked
tlie memal et|uipmcn> and mimic gifts necessary for the ira-
personauon ot an enthusiastic Royalist, they suggested Tie had
belter po e as a comma* lv apolitical commissioner, a neutral
little man interested or*' m jetting a good puce tor various
pip i s thit private pmies had is 1 ed him to like out of
Zambia and Jelnci k t»k r tighfful owner- Chance, m one
-it Pj anti h.ihst mo ■vis *'tlped a v of thv lesser Shadows
whom we Jiul v fl ‘Giuti \ hid a fathcr-in-Iaw called
T Gron B, i haimles> old codgei long icured from the civil
service and quite incapable oi understanding certain Renais-
f ime .sptets of the new icgime He had been, or thought
] i tad been (restiosptctive distance magnifies things), a close
tiicnu ol the late Muustei oi Foreign All urs, Oswm Bietwal’s
lather, and theiefore was looking ioiward to the da) when
he would be *hle to baosmn to “puling” Oswm (who, he
understood, wj" not ex icily persona ^ata with the new re-
gime) a bundle of precious tamilj papers that the dusty barott
had come across to chauec in the tiles of a governmental
oJhce All at once he was informed that now the day had
come, the documents would be immcdiatelv forwarded to
Paris He was al&o allowed to prefix a buet note to them
which read.

Here are some precious papers belonging to vour family.

I cannot do better than place them m the hands ot the son

ot the gicat man who was my fellow student m Heidelberg

126

P A I E TIRE

and my teacher m the diplomatic service Verba volant ,

scnpta manent

The scripta m question were two hundred and thirteen long
letters which had passed some seventy years ago between
Zule Bretwit, Oswin’s grand-uncle, Mayor of Odevalla, and
a cousin of his, Ferz Bretwit, Mayor of Aros This corre-
spondence, a dismal exchange of bureaucratic platitudes and
fustian jokes, was devoid of even such parochial interest as
letters of this «ort may possess in the eyes of a local his-
torian — but of course there is no way of telling what will
repel or attract i sentimental ance tralist — and this was what
Oswm Bretwit had always been known to be bv h s foimer
staff I would like to take time out here to interrupt this diy
commentary and pay a bnet tribute to Oswm Bietwit

Physically, he was a sickly btld-headed man resembling
a pallid gland His face was ssngrlaily featureless He had
cafe-au lait eyes One temembers him alwivs a* weannt?
mourning band But this insipid exterior belied the quality
of the man From beyond the shimrg corrosions >f the
ocean I salute here brave Bretwit' I c* then appear tor m >
ment his hand and mine firmly clasping e'ich oth^r icjo
the water over the golden v«kc of emblem itic sjh
no insurance tirm oi airline use thu mugne on tin glossv pan,
of a magazine as an ad bidge under the picture ot a rctiKd
businessman stupefied and honored by the sight of tie tech
nicolored snack that the ~ir hoste%s otfcis him *»th every-
thing else she can give rather, let this lofty hands! ike bt
regarded m our cynicil age of frenzied heterosexuahsm as a
last, but lasting, svmbol ot vilor and self-abnegation How
fervently one had dreamed th it a similar symbol but in verbal
form might have imbued the poem of another dead friend,
but this was not to be Vainly does one look in Pale Fire
(oh, pale, indeed') for the wirmtb ot my hand gripping
yours, poor Shade '

But to return to the roofs of Tans Courage was allied m
Oswm Bretwit with integrity kindness, dignity, and what cm
be euphemistically called endearing raivelS When Gradus
telephoned from the airport, and to whet his appetite read
to him Baron B’s message (minus the I atm tag), Bretwit’s
only thought was for the treat m store for him Gradus had
declined to say over the telephone what exactly the “precious

Commentary 127

papers’* were, but it so happened that the ex-consul had been
hoping lately to retrieve a valuable stamp collection that his
father had bequeathed years ago to a now defunct cousin The
cousin had dwelt in the same house as Baron B , and with
all these complicated and entrancing matters uppermost m his
mmd, the ex-consul, whde awaiting his visitor, kept wonder-
ing not it the person iron 7emhla was a dangerous fraud,
but whether he would bring all the albums at once or would
do it gradually >o as to see what he might get toi his pains.
Bretwit hoped the business would bo completed that very
night mce on the following morning he was to be hospitalized
md possibl} opeiakd upon (he was. ard died under the
knife)

two secret oents bilrngnw to uval lactions meet in a
hatth ot wits, and if one has none, the rtfect may be droll;
it dull if both arc dolts 1 defy am body to find m the an-
rds of plot and count i pi >t an v thing more inept and boriltg
thuii the svene ^int occupies the rest ol this conscientious
note

oricKlu-* s l down uncomtortabh, on the edge ot a sofa
(noon which * tired kn g li iJ mimed less than a v« ai ago),
cupped i» to lu> huJcisc, hm ltd to his ho^ a bulky brown
piper Dared and travelled 1 is haunches to i chan near
Bietwits seat in order to watch in comtorl his tussle with
the string In stunned silence BroUil stared at what lie finally
unwrapped ind then Mid

* \\ di. thais the . nd of a he am I his correspondence has
been published in Wlk or i^t'7 no, after ill — by berz
Brduit’s widow— i may even have a copy ot tt somewhere
among ni\ books tVorco\e' thi> is not a hologiaph hut an
apograph, made b) i senhe tor the punters- ->ou will note
that both miyors wntt the same hand”

“How interesting.” said Oiadus noting it
“Naluidll) T appreciate the kind thought behind it,” said
Bietwit

“We weie sure }ou would,’ said pleased Gi idus
“Baron B must be a little gaga,” continued Bretwit, “but
I repeat, his kind intention is touching I suppose vou want
some money for bunging this treasure 9 ”

“rhe pleasure it gises you should be our reward,” answered
Gradus. “But let me tell you frankly, we took a lot of pains
in try to do this properly, and I have come a long way. How-

128

PALE FIRE

ever, I want to offer you a little arrangement. You be nice
to us and we’ll be nice to you. I know your funds are some-
what — ” (Small-fish gesture and wink).

“True enough/’ sighed Bretwit.

“If you go along with us it won’t cost you a centime.”

“Oh, I could pay something ” (Pout and shrug).

“We don’t need your money” (Traffic-stopper’s palm). “But
here’s our plan. I have mess iges from other barons for other
fugitives. In tact, 1 have letters for the most mysterious fugi-
tive of all.”

“What!” cried Bretwit in candid surprise. “The) know
at home that His Majesty has left Zembla?” (1 could have
spanked the dear man )

“Indeed, yes,” said Gradus kneading his hands, and fairly
panting with animal pleasure — a matter ol instinct no doubt
since the man certainly could not realize intelligently *hat
the ex-consul’s faux pas was nothing less than the first con-
firmation of the King’s presence abroad: “Indeed,” he re-
peated with a meaningful leer, “and I would be deeply obliged
to you if you would recommend me to Mr. X ”

At these words a false truth dawned upon Oswnn Bretwil
and he moaned to himself: Ot com sc! How obtuse of me*
He is one of us f The fineers of his left hand involuntarily
started to twitch as if ht were pulling a kikapoo puppet ovei
it, while his eyes followed intently his interlocutor’s low-
class gesture ol satisfaction. A Karlist agent, revealing himself
to a superior, was expected to make a sien corresponding
to the X (for Xavier) m the one-hand alphabet of deaf mutes:
the hand held m horizontal position with the index curved
rather flaccidly and the rest of the fingers bunched (many
have criticized it for looking too droopy; it has now been
replaced by a more virile combination). On the several oc-
casions Bretwit had been given it, the manifestation had been
preceded for him, during a moment of suspense — rather a
gap in the texture ol time than an actual delay — by some-
thing similar to what physicians call the aura, a strange sensa-
tion both tense and vaporous, a hot-cold ineffable exasperation
pervading the entire nervous system before a seizure. And
on this occasion too Bretwit felt the magic wine rise to his
head.

“All right, I am ready. Give me the sign,” he avidly said.

Gradus, deciding to risk it, glanced at the hand in Bretwit’s

Commentary 129

lap* unperceived by its owner, it seemed to be prompting
Gradus m a manual whisper He tried to copy what it was
doing its best to convey — mere rudiments of the required
sign

“No, no,” said Breiwit with an indulgent smile tor the awk-
ward novice “The other hand, my friend His Majesty is left-
handed, you know ”

Gradus tried again — but, hke an expelled puppet, the wild
little prompter had disappeared Sheepishly contemplating his
fixe stubby strangers, Gradus went through the motions of
in incompetent and hilf piralyzod shadow giapher and finally
riiide an uncertain V ior-Victory sign Bretwit’s smile began
to L de

His smile gone, Bretwil (the name means Chess Intelli-
gence' got up from ins chair In a larger room he would
have p<*ccd up and down — pot m this cluttered study Gradus
the Bunglei buttoned ill three buttons of his tight brow« coat
and shook his lu ad several turns

I thmk he snd c ossl\ ont must be fair It l bung sou
these v ihnbic pip.rs you must in return amnae an mter-
mov oi itkistene "c his i<Jdn.ss

I know who you cned Bieiwit pointing ‘You’re a
rvpoiter 1 ' \ou ire from that chcip Dimsh piper sticking
oiu of )dn pocket itn idus inechmically fumbled at it and
frowned' “I hid hoped th^\ hid given up postering me*
Ihe uJt/u mii'aict oi it 1 Nothim; p sailed to \ou, neither
'nicer nor c ile nor the pndr ot i king’ (ahs, this is true
not onl\ cl Gradus- lie his u ilcagties n Arcadx too;

Giadm sat tiring it his nt* shoes — mahoganx red with
sk vc pitied ^ip^ An imbulm-i screamed its unpatitnt way
through dark streets three stones below Bretx n \cnted his
irritation on the maestri! kltcis King on the tabic He
snitched up the mat p'le with its detached wrapping and
flung it all in the wa c tepaper bisket The string dropped out-
side, it the feet of Giadus who picked it up and added it to
the senpta

“Please, go/ sud poor Brttwit ‘I hive a pain m groin
that is driving me mad I have not slept foi three nights You
journalists are an obstinate bunch but I am obstinate too You
will never learn from me anx thing about mx king Good-bye/*

He waited on the landing for his visitors steps to go down
and reach the front door it was opened and closed, and pres-

130

p a i r f i r r

ently the automatic light on the stairs went out with the sound
of a kick

Line 287 humming as you pack

The card (his twenty-foui th) vutb this passage (lines 287-
299) is marked July 7th, and under that date m my little
agenda I find this scribble Dr. Ahlvrt, 3 30 p m Feeling a
bit nervous, as most people do at the prospect of seeing a
doctor, I thought I would buy on m) way to him something
soothing to prevent an accelerated pulse trom misleading
credulous science I found the drops 1 wanted, took the aro-
matic draught in the pharmacy, and was coming out when
I noticed the Shades leaving n shop next door She was earn-
ing a new traveling grip The dreadful thought that they iniybt
be going away on a summer vacation neutralized the mcdiune
I had just swallowed One gels so tecustomed to mother life s
running alongside one’s own th>t i sudden turn-off on the
part of the parallel satellite causes m out a tiding vi stupe
faction, emptiness, and injustice *nu wh*t is more he had
not yet finished ‘ pot in’

“Planning to ti vtP’ 1 ’sked s*nd n^ i 0 pointer it tK
bag

Sybil raised *t b\ the e-us hk~ i mM ad ^oasiJeica ir
with mj eves

“Yes, at the end of the montl ’ sne s«nd Mtcr Jorm is
through w ith his wo> k ’

(The poeni f )

“And wheie prn r * (turning to T obt >

Mr Shade glanced at Mr* Sbadi rui she replied /or him
in her usual husk offhind fashion ll d they did not know
for sure yet -it might be Wjomim? or Utah oj Montana, and
perhaps they would lem somewhere a t ihn at n 0(>0 or 7,000
feet

“Among the lupines and the aspens,” *iid the poet gra\ely
(Conjuring up the scene /

I started to calculate aloud in meters the altitude that I
thought much too high for John s heart but Svbii pulled him
by the sleeve reminding him they had more shopping to do,
and I was left wuh about 2,000 meters and a valerian-flavored
burp

But occasionally black-winged fate can display exquisite
thoughtfulness! Ten minutes later Dr A.— who treated Shade,

Commentary 131

too — was telling me in stolul detail that the Shades had rented
a little ranch some friends of theirs, who were going else-
where, had at Cedarn in Utana on the Idoming border. From
the doctor’s 1 flitted over to a travel agency, obtained maps
and booklets, studied them, learned that on the mountainside
above Cedarn there were two or three clusters of cabins,
rushed my order to the Cedarn Post Office, and a few days
later had rented for the month of August what looked in the
snapshots they sent me like a cross between a mujik’s izba
and Refuge Z, but it had a tiled bathroom and cost dearer
than my Appalachian castle. Neither the Shades nor 1 breathed
a word about our summer address but I knew, and they did
not, that it was the same. 7 he more 1 fumed at Sybil’s evident
intention to Keep it concealed from me, the sweeter was the
forevision of my sudden emergence in Tirolese garb from
behind a boulder and of Johns «heepish but pleased grin.
During the fortnight that T had my demons fill my g^tic
mirror to overflow with those pink and mauve cliffs and black
juniper* and winding roads and sage brush changing to grass
«nd lush blue flowers, and death-pale aspens, and an endless
sequen.c of green-shorted Kinbotes meeting an anthology of
poets and a hrocken of their wives, T must have made some
awful mistake m rru' incantations, lot the mountain slope is
dry and drear, and the Hurleys’ tumble- down ranch, lifeless.

/ we 293. She

Ha/el Shade, the poet’s d t lighter, born in 1934, died 1957
(see notc> to lines 21U and 347).

lint 316. The Ioothwort White haunted our woods in May

Frankly, f am not certain whit thi« means. My dictionary
defines “tootbwort” as “a kmd of cress” and the noun “white”
«s “any pure white breed ot farm animal or a certain genus
of lepidoptera.” Little help is provided by the variant written
in the margin:

In woods Virginia Whites occurred in May
Folklore characters, perhaps? Fairies? Or cabbage butterflies?
Line 319: wood duck

A pretty conceit. The wood duck, a richly colored bird,
emerald, amethyst, carnelian, with black and while markings,

132

PALE FIRE

is incomparably more beautiful than the much-overrated swan,
a serpentine goose with a dirty neck of yellowish plush and
a frogman's black rubber flaps.

Incidentally, the popular nomenclature of American animals
reflects the simple utilitarian minds of ignorant pioneers and
has not yet acquired the patina of European faunal names.

Line 334: Would never come for her

“Would he ever come ioi me?" I used to wonder waiting
and waiting, m certain amber-and-rose crepuscules, for a ping-
pong friend, or lor old John Shade.

Line 347 : old barn

This barn, or rather shed, where “certain phenomena”
occurred in October (a few months prior to Hazel
Shade's death) had belonged to one Paul Hcntzner, an ec-
centric farmer ot German extraction, with old-lashioned hob-
bies such as taxidermy and herborizing Thiough an odd
trick of atavism, he was (according to Shnle who liked to
talk about him — the only time, mcidentalK, when m> sweet
old friend became a tiny bit ot a bore f ) a throwback to the
“curious Germans’ 1 who three centuries aiio had been the
fathers ot the first great naturalists. All hough bv academic
standards an uneducated man, with no real knowledge ol far
things in space or time, he had about him a colertul and
earthy something that pleased John Shade much better than
the suburban refinements of the English Department. He who
displayed such fastidious care in his choice of lellow ramblers
liked to trudge with the gaunt solemn German, every other
evening, up the wood path to Dulwich, and all around his
acquaintance’s fields Delighting as he did in the right word,
he esteemed Heni/ner foi knowing “the names of things” —
though some ot those names w r ere no doubt local monstrosi-
ties, or Germanisms, or pure inventions on the old rascal’s
part.

Now he was walking with another companion. Limpidly
do I remember one perfect evening when my friend sparkled
with quips, and marrowskies, and anecdotes which I gallantly
countered with tales of Zcrabla and harebreath escapes! As
we were skirting Dulwich Forest, he interrupted me to indi-
cate a natural grotto in the mossy rocks by the side of the
path under the flowering dogwoods. This was the spot where

Commentary 133

the good farmer invariably stopped, and once, when they hap-
pened to be accompanied by his little boy, the latter, as he
trotted beside them, pointed and remarked informatively:
“Here Papa pisses ” Another, less pointless, story awaited me
at the top of the hill, wheie a square plot invaded with willow
herb, milkweed and ironweed, and teeming with butterflies,
contrasted sharply with the goldenrod all around it After
Hentzner’s wife had left him taking with her
their child, he sold his farmhouse (now replaced by a drive-m
cinema) and went to li\e m town, but on summer nights he
used to take a sleeping bag to the b irn that stood at the far
ena of the land he still owned, and there one night he passed
*»way

Ihat burn hul stood on the weed) spot Shade was poking
at with Aunt Mauds tavonte cane One Saturday evenmg a
}oung student tmplovee Irom the campus hotel and a local
hoyden went into it for some purpose or other and were
*.h tting or dozing there when they were (lightened out of
dj^r wit* b\ rattling sounds and flying lights causing them
*o flee in disorder iNobodv real!) cared what had routed
them — whether it w*s an outraged ghost or a lejected swam
But the Wo ihmith Ga~eiti t llie old st student newspaper
iu the US\ ) picked up the incident md stirted to worry
the stuffing out of it like a mischievous pup Several self-
styled psychic resort hers visited tut place and the whole
business was so blatantly turning into a rag, with the participa-
tion of the most notorious college pranksters, that Shade com-
plained to the authorities with the result tl at the useless barn
w \s demolished is constituting a fire hazard

From Jane P I obtained however a good deal of quite
different, and much more pathetic inform ition — which ex-
plained to me why my friend had thought fit to regale me
with commonplace student mischief, but also made me regret
that 1 prevented him from getting to the point he was con-
fusely and self-consciously making (for as I have said in an
earlier note, he never cared to refer to his dead child) by
filling in a welcome pause with an extraordinary episode from
the history of Onhava University That episode took place
in the year of grace 1876 But to return to Hazel Shade She
decided she wanted to investigate the “phenomena” herself
for a paper (“on an) subject”) requited m her psychology
course by a cunning professor who was collecting data on

134

PALE FIRE

“Autoneurynological Patterns among American university stu-
dents.” Her parents permitted her to make a nocturnal visit
to the barn only under the condition that Jane P. — deemed
a pillar of reliability — accompany her. Hardly had the girls
settled down when an electric storm that was to last all night
enveloped their refuge with such theatrical ululations and
flashes as to make it impossible to attend to any indoor sounds
or lights. Hazel did not give up, and a few days later asked
Jane to come with her again, but Jane could not. She tells
me she suggested that the White twins (nice fraternity boys
accepted by the Shades) would come instead. But Hazel flatly
refused this new arrangement, and after a row with her par-
ents took her bulTs-eve and notebook and set off alone. One
can well imagine how the Shades dreaded a recrudescence of
the poltergeist nuisance but the ever-sagacious Dr. Sutton af-
firmed — on what authority 1 cannot tell — that cases in which
the same person was again involved in the same type of out-
breaks after a lapse of six years were practically unknown.

Jane allowed me to copv out some ot Hazel’s notes from
a typescript based on jottings made on the spot:

10:14 p.m. Investigation commenced.

10:23. Scrappy and scrabbly sounds

10:25. I rounJlet of pale light, the size of a small doily;
flitted across the dark walls, the boarded windows, and the
floor: changed its place; lingered here and there, dancing
up and down: seemed to wait in teasing play lor evadable
pounce. Gone.

10:37. Back again.

The notes continue for several pages hut for obvious rea-
sons I must renounce to give them verbatim in thin commen-
tary. There wee long pauses and “scratches and scrapcings"
again, and returns of the luminous circlet. She spoke to it.
If asked something that it found deliciously silly (“Are you
a will-o-the-wisp?”) it would dash to and fro in ecstatic nega-
tion, and when it wanted to give a grave answer to a giave
question (“Are you dead?”) would slowly ascend with an
air of gathering altitude for a weighty affirmative drop. For
brief periods of time it responded to the alphabet she recited
by staying put until the right letter was called whereupon it
gave a small jump of approval. But these jumps would get

Commentary 135

more and moie listless, and after a couple of words had been
slowly spelled out, the roundlet went limp like a tired child
and finally crawled into a chink, out of which it suddenly
flew with extravagant brio and started to spin around the
walls in its eagerness to resume the game The jumble of
broken words and meaningless syllables which she managed
at last to collect came out in her dutiful notes as a short
lme of simple letter-group » I transcribe

puda ata lane pid not ogo old wart aian ther tale feur

far rant lant lal told

In her titma/ks, the recorder states she had to lecite the
alphabet, or at ieist begin to recite it (there is a merciful
pieponderance of a’s) eighty times, but of the-e, seventeen
yielded no results Division based on such variable intervals
cannot he but lather arbitrary, some of the balderdash «nay
De iccombm d into other lcxicil units making no better sense
fte, war,* talant,” ‘her ” ‘ ^rrcjit etc) The bain ghost
scenic io have expressed himselt with the empasted difficultv
oi ipoplexv or a h< lf-awakenmg trom a hali-dream slashed
by a swoiJ ot light on tlit ceiling, a military disaster with
iCimn, consequences Lhit cannot be phrased distinctly ny the
thick unwilling tongue And in this case we too might wish
to cut short a roue, s or bedfellow's questions by sinking
butK into oblmon’s bliss — had not i dvbobcal foice urged
us to seek a secret dcs*gu in ihe ub* ^dabia,

Some kind o* hnk- t xnd bobohnk, some kind
Of cori elate \ pdle. n in the game

I abhor such girae* they make mv temptes throb with
abominable pain- -but I have braved it and pored endlessly,
with a commentator’s infinite patience and disgust, over the
crippled s>llables m Hazel's report to find the least allusion
to the poor girl’s tatc Not one hint did I find Neither old
Hcntzncr’s specter, nor an ambushed scamp’s toy flashlight,
nor her own imaginative hysteria, express anything here that
might be construed, however remotely, as containing a warn-
ing, or having some bearing on the circumstances of her soon-
coming death

Hazel’s report might have been longer if — as she told Jane

136

PALE FIRE

— a renewal of the ‘‘scrabbling” had not suddenly jarred upon
her tired nerves The roundlet of light that until now had
been keeping its distance made a pugnacious dash at her feet
so that she nearly fell off the wooden block serving her as
a seat. She became overwhelmingly conscious that she was
alone in the company of an inexplicable and perhaps very
evil being, and with a shudder that all but dislocated her
shoulder blades she hastened to regain the heavenly shelter
of the starry night. A familiar footpath with soothing gestures
and other small tokens of consolation (lone cricket, lone
streetlight) led her home. She stopped and let forth a howl
of terror: a system of dark and pale patches coagulating into
a phantastic figure had risen from the garden bench which
the porch light just reached, I have no idea what the average
temperature ot an October night m New Wye may be but
one is surprised that a father's anxiety should be great enough
in the present case to warrant conducting a vigil in the open
air in pajamas and the nondescript “bathrobe” which m y
birthday present was to replace (see note to line ISO

There are always “thiee nights 1 ’ in fairv tales, and in this
sad fain tale there was a third one too. This tune she wanted
her parents to witness the “talking light” with her. The min-
utes ot that third session m the barn ha\e not been preserved
but 1 oiler the reader the following scene which 1 teel cannot
be too far removed from the truth:

TUI HAUNT I D BARN

Pitch-darkness Faiher. Mother and Daugh.ei are heard
breathing gently in different corners 1 htee minutes pass,

FArHFR ( to Mother )

Are you comfortable there?

MOTJETLR

Uh-huh. These potato sacks make a perfect —

daughtlr ( with steam-engine force)

Sh-sbhbh!

Fifteen minutes pass in silence „ The eye begins to make out
here and there in the darkness bluish slits of night and one
star .

Commentary

137

MOTHFR

That was Dad’s tummy. I think — not a spook.

daughter (mouthing it)

Very funn) !

Another fifteen minutes elapse . Father, deep m workshop
thoughts , heaves a neutral sigh

DAUGHTER

Must we sigh all the time?

} if'cen minutes elapse

MOTHXR

If l s'art snoring let Spook pmch me.

nAUGHiFR (ou ^emphasizing self-control)

M other f Please ’ Please, Mother’ •

Icnhtt <itur> his throat but aeudts not to say anything.
Tw Ivi mou trinities elapse

Mi mu- it

lK\s am one ledire that Iheie ue still quite a few of those
ucdinpufrs an the rehiguatoi ?

/ thtt doi s ft

i>aij( htfr it \plodmo)

Why must \ou spoil v\ rUhnu ? Wh\ mu )ou ilways spoil
tA 01 vthm 1 > / WTu cant \ou L\ne people a one’ Don’t touch
me’

FA I HI R

Now look Hi/J, Mother won't sav another word, and we'll
go on with this— hut wove been suung an hour here and
it s getting late

I wo minutes pass Tife is hopeless , afterlife heartless Hazel
is heard quietly weeping in the dark John Shadi ughto a lan -
tern Sybil lights a cigarette Meeting adjourned .

The light never came bsck but it gleams again in a short
poun “The Nature of Electucitv, 0 which John Shade had
sent to the New Yoik magazine J hi Bean and the Butterfly,
some time in 1958, but which apeoicd only after his death:

138

PALE FIRE

The dead, the gentle dead — who knows? —

In tungsten filaments abide,

And on my bedside table glows
Another maxi’s departed bride.

And maybe Shakespeare floods a whole
Town with innumerable lights,

And Shelley’s inrandescent soul
Lures the pale moths of starless nights.

Streeflamps are numbered, and ma>be
Number nine-hundred-ninety-nine
(So brightly beaming through a tree
So green) is an old friend of mine.

And when above the livid plain
Forked lightning plays, therein may dwell
The torments of a Tamerlane,

The roar of tyrants torn in hell.

Science tells us, by the way, that the Farth would not
merely fall apart, but vanish like a ghost, it Flectucity were
suddenly removed from the world.

Lines 347-348. She twisted words

One of the examples her father gives is odd J am quite'
sure it was I who one day, when we were discussing ‘'mirror
words,” observed (and I recall the poet’s expression of stupe-
faction) that “spider” in reverse is ‘ rcdips,” and “T. S. Eliot,”
"toilest.” But then it is also true that Hazel Shade resembled
me in certain respects

Lines 367-370: then — pen, again — explain

In speech John Shade, as a good American, rhymed “again”
with “pen” and not with “explain.” The adjacent position of
these rhymes is curious.

Line 376: poem

I believe I can guess (in my bookless mountain cave) what
poem is meant; but without looking it up I would not wish
to name its author. Anyway, I deplore my friend’s vicious
thrusts at the most distinguished poets of his day.

Commentary

139

Lines 376-377 was said in English l itt to be

This is replaced m the draft by the more significant — and
more tuneful — variant

the Head of our Department deemed

Although it may be taken to refer to the man (whoever he
v is) who occupied this post at the tune Hazel Shade was a
student, the reader cannot be blamed for applying it to
Puil II, Jr, the line admimstiator and inept scholar who
sin c headed the I nglish Department of Word smith Col-
lege Wc iiiel now and then (see Foreword and note to line
8 *4) but not often Fhe Head ol the Department to which
I belonged was Prof N ittochdag— “Netocbka” as we called
*hc den man C ertamlv the migraines that ha\e lately tor-
mented me to such a degree that 1 once hid to leive li^thc
midst of a concert it which 1 happened to bt sitting beside
P i»l H ir hould not base been a Grangers business They
ipDireolh wu\ vc»n much so He kept his esc oil me, and
pruned] ’teh upon lobn Shides demise ctrcuhud a numco-
„i ipVd lettei th t

n.\crd mtmbcis ot the Depirtnvnt of Fughsh are pain-
lulls concerned t\er the fate of a manuscript poem, or
put* ol a manuscript poem left by The late John Shade
J he in nuscupf ltll into the hmds ol a person who not
only is unqualmed for the 10 b i f editing it, belonging as
he docs to anothui depaitmcnt but is known to have a
deranged mind One vondeis whether some legal action,
etc

‘Lvgal action, 1 of cou?s<, might he taken bj somebody
else loo But no matter one s just anger is mitigated by the
satisfaction oi foreknowing ihit the gentleman will be

less worried about the fate of my friends poem after reading
the passage commented here Southed liked a roasted rat for
supper — which is especially comic in vaw of the rats that
devoured his Bishop

Line 384 book on Pope

The title of this work which cm be found m any college
library is Supremely Blest , a phrase borrowed from a Popian

140

PALE FIRE

line, which I remember but cannot quote exactly. The book
is concerned mainly with Pope’s technique but also contains
pithy observations on “the stylized morals oi his age.”

Lines 385-386: Jane Dean, Pete Dean

The transparent pseudonyms of two innocent people. I
visited Jane Provost when passing through Chicago in August.
I found her still unmarried. She showed me some amusing
photos of her cousin Peter and his friends. She told me —
and J have no reason to disbelieve her words — that Peter
Provost (whom I desired very very much to meet, but he
was, alas, selling automobiles in Detroit) might have exag-
gerated a wee bit, but certainly did not fib, when explaining
that he had to keep a promise made to one of his dearest
fraternity friends, a glorious young athlete whose “garland”
will not, one hopes, be “briefer than a girl's.” Such obliga-
tions arc not to be treated lightly or disdainfully. Jane said
she had tried to talk to the Shades after the tragedy, and later
had written Sybil a long letter that was never acknowledged.
I said, displaying a bit of the slang I had recently started to
master: “You are telling me!”

Lines 403-404. it’s eight fifteen (And here time forked)

From here to line 474 two themes alternate in a synchro-
nous arrangement: television in the Shades’ parlor and the
replay, as it were, of Hazel’s (already adumbrated) actions
from the moment Peter met his blind date (406-407) and
apologized for having to leave in a hurry (420-428) io Hazel's
ride in the bus (445-447 and 457-459), ending with the
watchman’s finding her body (475-477). I have italicized the
Hazel theme.

The whole thing strikes me as too labored and long, es-
pecially since the synchronization device has been already
worked to death by Flaubert and Joyce. Otherwise the pattern
is exquisite.

Line 408: A male hand

On July 10, the dav John Shade wrote this, and perhaps
at the very minute he started to use his thirty-third index
card for lines 406-416, Gradus was driving in a hired car
from Geneva to Lex, where Odon was known to be resting,
after completing his motion picture, at the villa of an old

Commentary 141

Amencan friend, Joseph S I avender (the name hails from
the laundry, not from the laund) Our brilliant schemer had
been told that Joe lavender collected photographs of the
artistic type called m French ombriolt s He had not been
told what exactl) these were and dismissed them mentally as
“lampshades with landscapes ” His cietmous plan was to
present himset as the agent of a Strasbourg art dealer and
then, over drinks with Lavender and his house guest, en-
deavoi to pick up clues to the King’s whereabouts He did
not reckon with the fact that Donald Odon with his absolute
? er o ol such things would have immediately deduced from
the way Gradus displayed his empty palm before shaking
lunrls or made a slight bow after every sq , and othei tricks
ot demeanor (which Cr ulus himself did not notice m people
but had acquired from them) that wherever he had been bom
he had certain!) lived foi a consideiable time m a low-class
7emblan environment and was therefore a spv or wwse.
Oradu> was also unaw ire that the omhrtoks lavender col-
lected (<nd l am sure Joe will not resent this indiscretion)
combined exquisite beaut) with highly indecent subject matter
— nudities blending with fig trees, oversize ardors, softly
shaded hinderchceks and aNo a dapple 01 female charms
From his Genev \ hotel Gradus had tned to ^et Ltvender
on the telephone but was told he could not be reached before
noon B\ noon Gradus was ahead) under vva) and telephoned
iRun, this time from Monti eu\ Lavender had been given
the message and would Mr Dcgrt drop in around tea time
He luncheon* d m a like side cate went foi a stroll asked
the price ot a null crystal giraffe m a souvenir shop, bought
a newsjuper, read it on a bench, and presently drove on In
the vicimtv of lex he lost his way among steep loituous lanes.
Upon stopping above a vineyard, at the rough entrance of
an unfinished house, ne was shown bv the three index fingexs
ot three masons the led roof ot Lavender’s villa high up m
the ascending greenery on the opposite side of the road He
decided to leave the car and climb the stone steps of what
looked like an easy short cut While he was trudging up the
walled walk with his eye on the rabbit toot oi a poplar which
now hid the red root at the top of the climb, now disclosed
it, the sun found a weak spot among the rain clouds and
next moment a ragged blue hole in them grew a radiant nm.
He felt the burden and the odor of his new brown suit bought

142

PALE FIRE

in a Copenhagen store and already wrinkled. Puffing, consult-
ing his wrist watch, and fanning himself with his trilby, also
new, he reached at last the transverse continuation of the
looping road he had left below. He crossed it, walked through
a wicket and up a curving gravel path, and found himself in
front of Lavender’s villa. Its name, Libitina, was displayed
in cursive script above one of the barred north windows, with
its letters made of black wire and the dot over each of the
three i’s cleverly mimicked by the tarred head of a chalk-
coated nail driven into the white facade. This device, and
the north- facing window grates, Gradus had observed in Swiss
villas before, but immunity to classical allusion deprived him
of the pleasure he might have derived from the tribute that
Lavender’s macabre joviality had paid the Roman goddess
of corpses and tombs. Another matter engaged Iris attention:
from a corner casement came the sounds of a piano, a tumult
of vigorous music which for some odd reason, as he was to
tell me later, suggested to him a possibility he had not con-
sidered and caused his baud to fly to his hip pocket as he
prepared to meet not Lavender and not Odon but that gifted
hymnist, Charles the Beloved. The music stopped as Graduv,
confused by the whimsical shape of the house, hesitated be-
fore a glassed-in porch An elderly footman in green appeared
from a green side door and led him to another entrance.
With a show of carelessness not improved by laborious repe-
tition, Gradus asked him, first in mediocre Lrench. then in
worse English, and finally in fair German, it there were many
guests stajing in the house; but the mail only smiled and
bowed him into the music room. The musician had vanished.
A harplike din still came from the grand piano upon which
a pair of beach sandals stood as on the brink of a lily pond.
From a window scat a gaunt jet- glittering lady stiffly arose
and introduced herself as the governess of Mr. La venders
nephew. Gradus mentioned his eagerness to see Lavender’s
sensational collection: this aptly defined its pictures of love-
making in orchards, but the governess (whom the King had
always called to her pleased face Mademoiselle Belle instead
of Mademoiselle Baud) hastened to confess her total ignorance
of her employer’s hobbies and treasures and suggested the
visitor’s taking a look at the garden: “Gordon will show you
his favorite flowers” she said, and called into the next room

Commentary 143

“Gordon I” Rather reluctantly there came out a slender but
strong-looking lad of fourteen or fifteen dyed a nectarine hue
by the sun. He had nothing on save a leopard-spotted loin-
cloth. His closely cropped hair was a tint lighter than his skin.
His lovely bestial face wore an expression both sullen and
sly. Our preoccupied plotter did not register any of these
details and merely experienced a general impression of in-
decency. “Gordon is a musical prodigy,” said Miss Baud,
and the boy winced. “Gordon, will you show the garden to
this gentleman?” The boy acquiesced, adding he would take
a dip if nobody minded. He put on his sandals and led the
way out. Through light and shade walked the strange pair:
the graceful boy wreathed about the loins with ivy and the
seedy killer in his cheap brown suit with a folded newspaper
sticking out of his left-hand coat pocket.

“That’s the Grotto,” said Gordon. “I once spent the night
here with a friend.” Gradus let his indifferent glance enter
the mossy recess where one could glimpse a collapsible mat-
tress with a dark stain on its orange nylon. The boy applied
avid lips to a pipe of spring water and wiped his wet hands
on his black bathing trunks. Gradus consulted his watch.
They strolled on. “You have not seen anything yet,” said
Gordon.

Although the house possessed at least half-a-dozen water
closets, Mr. Lavender in fond memory of his grandfather’s
Delaware farm, had installed a rustic privy under the tallest
poplar of his splendid garden, and for chosen guests, whose
sense of humor could stand it, he would unhook from the.
comfortable neighborhood of the billiard room fireplace a
heart-shaped, prettily embroidered bolster to take with them
to the throne.

The door was open and across its inner side a boy’s hand
had scrawled in charcoal: The King was here .

“That’s a fine visiting card,” remarked Gradus with a
forced laugh. “By the way, where is he now, that king?”

“Who knows,” said the boy striking his flanks clothed in
white tennis shorts, “that was last year. I guess he was head*
ing for the Cote d’Azur, but I am not sure.”

Dear Gordon lied, which was nice of him. He knew per-
fectly well that his big friend was no longer in Europe; but
dear Gordon should not have brought up the Riviera matter

PALE FIRE

144

which happened to be true and the mention of which caused
Gradus, who knew that Queen Disa had a palazzo there, to
mentally slap his brow.

They had now reached the swimming pool. Gradus, in
deep thought, sank down on a canvas stool. He should wire
headquarters at once. No nepd to prolong this visit. On the
other hand, a sudden departure might look suspicious. The
stool creaked under him and he looked around ior another
seat. The young woodwose had now closed his eyes and was
stretched out supine on the pool’s marble margin; his Tarzan
brief had been cast aside on the turf, Gradus spat in disgust
and walked back towards the house. Simultaneously the eld-
erly footman came running down the steps of the terrace
to tell him in three languages that he was wanted on the
telephone. Mr. Lavender could not make it alter all hut would
like to talk to Mr. Degre. After an exchange of civilities
there was a pause and La vender asked* “Sure vou aren’t a
mucking snooper from that French rag 0 ” “A what?” said
Gradus, pronouncing the last word as hl vot ” *‘A mucking
snooping son ot a bitch?” Gradus hung up.

He retrieved his car and drove up to a higher level on the
hillside. From the same road bay, on a misty and luminous
September day, with the diagonal of the first silver filament
crossing the space between two balusters, the Kang had sur-
veyed the twinkling ripples of Lake Geneva and had noted
their antiphonal response, the flashing of tinfoil scares in the
hillside vineyards. Giadus as he stood there, and moodily
looked down at the red tiles ot Lavender’s villa snuggling
among Us protective trees, could make out, with some help
from his betters, a pan of the lawn and a segment of the
pool, and even distinguish a pair of sandals on its marble
rim — all that remained of Narcissus, One assumes he won-
dered if he should not hang around for a bit to make sure
he had not been bamboozled. From far below mounted the
clink and tinkle of distant masonry work, and a sudden train
passed between gardens, and a heraldic butterfly volant en
arriere , sable, a bend gules, traversed the stone parapet, and
John Shade took a fresh card.

Line 413 : a nymph came pirouetting

In the draft there is the lighter and more musical:

Commentary 145

4,3 A nymphet pirouetted

Lmt.s 417-421 ] went upstairs, etc

The draft yields an interesting variant:

41 1 1 fled upstairs at the first quawk of j az
And read a galley proof “Such veises as
‘Sec the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing,

The sot a hero, lunatic a king’

Smack of their heartless age ” Then C3me your call

This is, of course, from Pope’s Fssay on Man One knows
not what to wondci at moie Pope’s not finding a monosyl-
liblc to replace hero’’ (for example, ‘min”) so as to ac^
commodate the definite article before the next word, oi\
Shade’s ieplaung an admirable passage by the much flabbier i
final iext Or was he afraid of oflending an authentic kmg?
In pondering the near past 1 have never been ible to ascertain
retrospectivelv it he really had “guessed my secret,” as be
once observed (set note to line 991)

Line 426 Just behind (one oozy footstep) Frost

The reference is, of course, to Robert Frost (b 1874)
The hnt displavs one of those combinations of pun and meta-
phor at which our pott excels In the temperature charts of
poetrv high is low, and low high, so that the degree at which
perfect crystallization occuis is above that of tepid facility
This is what oui modest poet says, u effect, respecting the
atmosphere of his own fame

Frost is the author of one of the greatest short poems in
the English language a poem that everv American boy knows
by heart, about the wintry woods, and the dreary dusk, and
the little horsebells ot gentle remonstration m the dull dark-
ening air, and that prodigious and poignant end — two closing
lines identical in every syllable, but one personal and physical,
and the other metaphysical and universal I dare not quote
from memory lest I displace one small precious word

With all his excellent gifts, John Shade could never make
his snowflakes settle that way

Line 431 March mght . • . headlights from afar ap-
proached

146

PALE FIRE

Note how delicately at this point the television theme hap-
pends to merge with the girl’s theme (see line 440, more
headlights in the fog . . . ).

Lines 433-434: To the . . . sea Which we had visited in
thirty-three

Prince Charles was eighteen and Disa, Duchess of
Payn, five The allusion is to Nice (see also line 240) where
the Shades spent the first part ol that year; hut here again, as
in regard to so many lascinating facets of my friend’s past life,
I am not in the possession of particulars (who is to blame,
dear S.S?) and not in the position to say whethe** or not, in
the course of possible excursions along the coast, they ever
reached Cap Turc and glimpsed from an oleander-lined lane,
usually open to tourists, the Ttalianate villa built b) Queen
Disa’s grandiather in 1908, and called then Villa Paradise , or
in Zemblan Villa Paradisa , later to forego the first hall ot its
name in honor of his ravorite granddaughter. Fheie she spent
the first fifteen summers of her life; thither did she return m
1953, “tor reasons of health"’ (as impressed on the nation)
but really, a banished queen; and there she still dwells.

When the Zcmblan Revolution broke out (Mav 1 ),
she wrote the King a wild letter in governess English, uigtng
him to come and stay with her until the situation cleared up.
The letter was intercepted by the Onhava police, translated
into crude Zemblan by a Hindu member of the Extremist
party, and then read aloud to the royal captive in a wouid-be
ironic voice by the preposteious commandant of the palace.
There happened to be in that letter one — only one, thank
God — sentimental sentence: “I want you to know tint no
matter how much you hurt me, you cannot hurt my love,”
and this sentence (if we re-English it from the Zemblan) came
out as: “I desire }ou and love when you flog me.” He inter-
rupted the commandant, calling him a buffoon and a rogue,
and insulting everybody around so dreadfully that the Ex-
tremists had to decide fast whether to shoot him at once or let
him have the original of the letter.

Eventually he managed to inform her that he was confined
to the palace. Valiant Disa hurriedly left the Riviera and made
a romantic but fortunately ineffectual attempt to return to
Zembla. Had she been permitted to land, she would have been
forthwith incarcerated, which would have reacted on the

Commentary 147

King’s flight, doubling the difficulties of escape. A message
from the Karlists containing these simple considerations
checked her progress in Stockholm, and she flew back to her
perch in a mood of frustration and fury (mainly, I think, be-
cause the message had been conveyed to her by a cousin of
hers, good old Curdy Buff, whom she loathed). Several weeks
passed and she was soon in a state of even worse agitation
owing to rumors that her husband might be condemned to
death. She left Cap Turc again. She had traveled to Brussels
and chartered a plane to fly north, when another message, this
time from Odon, came, saying that the King and he were out
of Zembla, and that she should quietly regain Villa Disa and
await there further news. In the autumn of the same year she
was informed by Lavender that a man representing her hus-
band would be coming to discuss with her certain business
matters concerning property she and her husband jointly
owned abroad. She was in the act of writing on the t&race
under the jacaranda a disconsolate letter to Lavender when the
tall, sheared and bearded visitor with the bouquet of flowers-
of-the-gods who had been watching her from afar advanced
through the garlands of shade. She looked up — and of course
no dark spectacles and no make-up could for a moment fool
her

Since her final departure from Zembla he had visited her
twice, the last time two years before, and during that lapse of
time her pale-skin, dark-hair beauty had acquired a new,
mature and melancholy glow. In Zembla, where most females
are freckled blondes, we have the saying: bclwif ivurkumpf
wid snew ebanumf , “A beautiful woman should be like a
compass rose of ivory with four parts of ebony.” And this was
the trim scheme nature had followed in Disa’s case. There was
something else, something I was to realize only when I read
Pale Fire , or rather reread it after the first bitter hot mist of
disappointment had cleared before my eyes. I am thinking of
lines 261-267 in which Shade describes his wife. At the
moment of his painting that poetical portrait, the sitter was
twice the age of Queen Disa. I do not wish to be vulgar in
dealing with these delicate matters but the fact remains that
sixty-year-old Shade is lending here a well-conserved coeval
the ethereal and eternal aspect she retains, or should retain, in
his kind noble heart. Now the curious thing about it is that
Disa at thirty, when last seen in September 1958, bore a

148

PALE FIRE

singular resemblance not, of course, to Mrs. Shade as she was
when I met her, but to the idealized and stylized picture
painted by the poet in those lines of Pale f ire. Actually it
was idealized and stylized only in regard to the older woman;
in regard to Queen Disa, as she was that afternoon on that
blue terrace, it represented a plain unretouched likeness. I
trust the reader appreciates the strangeness of this, because if
he does not, there is no serwe in writing poems, or notes to
poems, or anything at al(.

She seemed also calmer than before, her self-control had
improved. During the previous meetings, and throughout their
marital life in Zembla, there had been, on her part, dreadtul
outbursts of temper. When m the finst years ot marriage he
had wished to cope with those blazes and blasts, trying to
make her take a rational view ot her misfortune, he had
found them very annoying; but gradually he learned to take
advantage ot them and welcomed them as giving him the op-
portunity of getting rid of her presence lor lengthening peiioch*
of time by not calling her back after a sequence of doors had
slammed evei moic distantly, or In leaving the palace himself
for some rural hideout

In the beginning ot their calamitous marriage he had
strenuously tried to possess her but to no avail. He infomied
her he had never made love before (which was pertewtly true
insofar as the implied object could onl) mean one thing to
her), upon which he was forced to endure iho ridicule ot
having her dutiful punt} involuntarily enact the wavs of a
courtesan with a client too young or too old, he said some-
thing to that effect (mainly to relieve the ordeal), and she
made an atrocious scene. He farced himselt with aphrodisiac^
but the anterior chaiacters of her unfortunate sex kept fatally
putting him off One night when he tried tigei tea, and hopes
rose high, he made the mistake of begging hei to comply with
an expedient which she made the mistake of denouncing as
unnatural and disgusting. Finally he told her that an old riding
accident was incapacitating him but that a cruise with his pals
and a lot of sea bathing would be sure to lestore his strength.

She had recently lost both parents and had no real friend to
turn to for explanation and advice when the inevitable rumors
reached her; these she was too proud to discuss with her
ladies in waiting but she read books, found out all about our
manly Zemblan customs, and concealed her naive distress

Commentary 149

under a great show of sarcastic sophistication. He congratu-
lated her on her attitude, solemnly swearing that he had given ■
up, or at least would give up, the practices of. his youth; but'
everywhere along the road powerful temptations stood at at-
tention. He succumbed to them from time to time, then every
other day, then several times daily — especially during the
robust regime of Harfar Baron of Shalksbore, a phenomenally
endowed young brute (whose family name, “knave’s farm,” is
the most probable derivation of “Shakespeare”). Curdy Buff
— as Harfar was nicknamed by his admirers — had a huge
escort of acrobats and bareback riders, and the whole affair
rather got out of hand so that Disa, upon unexpectedly re-
turning from a trip to Sweden, found the Palace transformed
into a circus. He again promised, again fell, and despite the
utmost discretion was again caught. At last she removed to
the Riviera leaving him to amuse himself with a band of Eton-
collared, sweet-voiced minions imported from England. m

What had the sentiments he entertained in regard to Disa
ever amounted to? Friendly indifference and bleak respect.
Not even in the first bloom of their marriage had he felt any
tenderness or any excitement. Of pity, of heartache, there
could be no question. He was, had always been, casual and
heartless. But the heart of his dreaming self, both before and
after the rupture, made ex traor dinar) 7 amends.

He dreamed of her more often, and with incomparably more
poignancy, than his surface-like feelings for her ivarranted;
these dreams occurred when he least thought of her, and
worries in no way connected with her assumed her image in
the subliminal world as a battle or a reform becomes a bird
of wonder in a tale for children. These heart-rending dreams
transformed the drab prose of his feelings for her into strong
and strange poetry, subsiding undulations of which would
flash and disturb him throughout the day, bringing back the
pang and the richness — and then only the pang, and then only
its glancing reflection — but not affecting at all his attitude to-
wards the real Disa.

Her image, as she entered and re-entered his sleep, rising
apprehensively from a distant sofa or goitlg in search of the
messenger who, they said, had just passed through the dra-
peries, took into account changes of fashion; but the Disa
wearing the dress he had seen on her the summer of the Glass
Works explosion, or last Sunday, or in any other antechamber

150

PALE FIRE

of time, forever remained exactly as she looked on the day he
had first told her he did not love her. That happened during
a hopeless trip to Italy, in a lakeside hotel garden — roses,
black araucarias, rusty, greenish hydrangeas — one cloudless
evening with the mountains of the far shore swimming in a
sunset haze and the lake all peach syrup regularly rippled with
pale blue, and the captions of a newspaper spread flat on the
foul bottom near the stone bank perfectly readable through
the shallow diaphanous filth, and because, upon hearing him
out, she sank down on the lawn in an impossible posture,
examining a grass culm and frowning, he had taken his words
back at once; but the shock had fatally starred the mirror,
and thenceforth in his dreams her image was infected with
the memory of that confession as with some disease or the
secret aftei effects of a surgical operation too intimate to be
mentioned.

The gist, rather than the actual plot of the dream, was a
constant refutation of his not loving her. His dream-love for
her exceeded in emotional tone, m spiritual passion and depth,
anything he had experienced in his surface existence. This love
was like an endless wringing of hands, like a blundering of the
soul through an infinite maze of hopelessness and remorse
They were, in a sense, amorous dreams, for they were per-
meated with tenderness, with a longing to sink his head onto
her lap and sob away the monstrous past They brimmed with
the awful awareness of her being so young and so helpless
They were purer than his life. What carnal aura there was in
them came not from her but from those with whom he be-
trayed her — prickly-chinned Phryma, pretty Timandra with
that boom under her apron — and even so the sexual scum re-
mained somewhere far above the sunken treasure and was
quite unimportant. He would see her being accosted by a misty
relative so distant as to be practically featureless. She would
quickly hide what she held and extend her arclied hand to be
kissed. He knew she had just come across a telltale object — a
riding boot in his bed — establishing beyond any doubt his un-
faithfulness. Sweat beaded her pale, naked forehead — but she
had to listen to the prattle of a chance visitor or direct the
movements of a workman with a ladder who was nodding his
head and looking up as he carried it in his arms to the boken
window. One might bear — a strong merciless dreamer might
bear — the knowledge of her grief and pride but none could

Commentary 151

bear the sight of her automatic smile as she turned from the
agony of the disclosure to the polite trivialities required of
her. She would be canceling an illumination, or discussing
hospital cots with the head nurse, or merely ordering breakfast
for two in the sea cave — and through the everyday plainness of
the talk, through the play of the charming gestures with which
she always accompanied certain readymade phrases, he, the
groaning dreamer, perceived the disarray of her soul and was
aware that an odious, undeserved, humiliating disaster had be*
fallen her, and that only obligations of etiquette and her
staunch kindness to a guiltless third party gave her the force to
smile. As one watched the light on her face, one foresaw it
would fade in a moment, to be replaced — as soon as the visi-
tor left — by that impossible little frown the dreamer could
never forget. He would help her again to her feet on the same
lakeside lawn, with parts of the lake fitting themselves into the
spaces between the rising balusters, and presently he andlftie
would be walking side by side along an anonymous alley, and
he would feel she was looking at him out of the corner of a
faint smile but when he forced himself to confront that ques-
tioning glimmer, she was no longer there. Everything had
changed, everybody was happy. And he absolutely had to find
her ai once to tell her that he adored her, but the large audi-
ence before him separated him from the door, and the notes
reaching him through a succession of hands said that she was
not available; that she was inaugurating a file; that she had
married an American businessman; that she had become a
character in a novel; that she was dead.

No such qualms disturbed him as he sat now on the ter-
race of her villa and recounted his lucky escape from the
Palace. She enjoyed his description of the underground link
with the theater and tried to visualize the jolly scramble across
the mountains; but the part concerning Garh displeased her as
if, paradoxically, she would have preferred him to have gone
through a bit of wholesome bough-magandy with the wench.
She told him sharply to skip such interludes, and he made her
a droll little bow. But when he began to discuss the political
situation (two Soviet generals had just been attached to the
Extremist government as Foreign Advisers), a familiar vacant
expression appeared in her eyes. Now r that he was safety out of
the country, the entire blue bulk of Zembla, from Embla
Point to Emblem Bay, could sink in the sea for all she cared. *

152

PALE FIRE

That he had lost weight was of more concern to her than that
he had lost a kingdom Perfunctorily she inquired about the
crown jewels, he revealed to her their unusual hidmg place,
and she melted m girlish mirth as she had not done for years
and years “I do have some business matters to discuss,” he
said “And there are papers you have to sign ” Up m the trellis
a telephone climbed with the roses One of her former ladies
in waiting, the languid and elegant Fleur de Fyler (now forty-
lsh and faded), still wearing pearls in her raven hair and the
traditional white mantilla, brought certain documents from
Disa’s boudoir Upon hearing the King’s mellow voice behind
the laurels, Fleur recogmzed it before she could be misled by
his excellent disguise Two footmen handsome \oung strangers
of a marked Latin type, appeared with the tei and caught
Fleur m mid-curtsev A sudden breeze groped among the
glycines DefiJer of flowers He asked Fleur as she turned to
so with the Disa orchids if she still played the \iola She shook
her head several times not wishing to speik without addressing
him and not daring to do so while the servants might to
within earshot

They weie alone agun Disa quick) v founu the papers he
needed Having finished with that, they tilked for a whde
about nice trivial things, such as the motion picture, bi^-ed on
a Zemblan legend, that Odon hoped to make in Pan* or Rome
How would he repiesent, they wondered, the narstran \
hellish hall where the souls of murderers were tortured undoi
a constant drizzle of drake venom coming down from the
foggy vault/ By and large the mteruew was proceeding m a
most satisfactory manner — though her fingers trembled a little
when her hand touched the elbow rest of his chair Careful
now

4 What are your plans / * she inquired “Why can’t you stay
here as long as you want? Please do I’ll be going to Rome
soon, you’ll have the whole house to yourself Imagine, >ou
can bed here as many as forty guests, forty Arabian thieves ”
(Influence of the huge terracotta vases in the garden )

He answered he would be going to America some time next
month and had business in Paris tomorrow

Why America? What would he do there?

Teach Examine literary masterpieces with brilliant t and
charming young people A hobby he could now freely indulge

“And, of course, I don’t know,” she mumbled looking

Commentary 153

away, “I don't know but perhaps if you’d have nothing against
it, 1 might visit New York — 1 mean, just for a week or two,
and not this yeai but the next ”

He complimented her on her silver-spangled jacket She
persevered* “Well?” “And your hairdo is most becoming ”
“Oh, what does it matter,” she wailed “what on earth does
anything matter!” “1 must be on my wav,” he whispered with
a smile and got up “Kiss me,” she said, and was like a limp,
shivering ragdoll in his arms for a moment

He walked to the gate At the turn of the path he glanced
back and saw m the distance her white figure with the listless
grace of ineffable giief bending over the garden table, and
suddenly a fragile bridge was suspended between waking in-
difference and dream-love But she moved, and he saw it was
not she at all but only poor Fleur de F\ler collecting the docu-
ments left among the tea things (See note to line 80 )

When in the cour-e of an evening stroll m May oi Juflte,
1^59 I offered Shade all this marvelous mateual he looked
■u me quizzically and said ‘That’o all vuy well, Charles
But there ire just two question* How cm you Inow that all
this intimate stuff aboui your rather appalling king is true?
And if t~ue, how can one hope to print such personal things
about people who, presumably, are still alive/”

*My dear John,” 1 replied genth and urgently, “do not
worn about trifles Once transmuted by you into poetry, the
sMiff m ill be true, and the people will come ilivt A poet’s
punhtu truth can cause no pain no t ffensi True art is above
false honor ”

‘Sure, sure, saul Shade “One can harness words like per-
founmg fleas and nnke them drive othei fleas Ob sure ”
“And moreover,” I continued as we walked down the road
light into a vast sunset, “as soon as your poem is read), as
soon as the glory of Zembla merges with the glory of your
verse, 1 intend to divulge to you an ultimate truth, m ex-
traordinary secret, that will put your mind completely at rest ”

Line 469 his gun

Gradus, as he drove back to Geneva, wondered when be
would be able to use it, that gun The afternoon was un-
bearably hot The lake bad developed a scaling of silver and
a touch of reflected thunderhead As many old glaziers, he
could deduce rather accurately water temperature from cer-

154

PALE FIRE

tain indices of brilliancy and motion, and now judged it to be
at least 23°. As soon as he got back to his hotel he made a
long-distance call to headquarters. It proved a terrible experi-
ence. Under the assumption that it would attract less atten-
tion than a BIC language, the conspirators conducted tele-
phone conversations in English — broken English, to be exact,
with one tense, no articles, and two pronunciations, both
wrong. Furthermore, by their following the crafty system (in-
vented in the chief BIC country) of using two different sets of
code words — headquarters, for instance, saying “bureau” tor
“king,” and Gradus saying “letter,” they enormously increased
the difficulty of communication, Fach side, fin?lly, had for-
gotten the meaning of certain phrases pertaining to the other's
vocabulary so that in result, their tangled and expensive talk
combined charades with an obstacle jace in the dark. Head-
quarters thought it understood that letters from the King
divulging his whereabouts could be obtained by breaking into
Villa Disa and rifling the Queen’s buieau; Gradus, who had
said nothing of the sort, but had merely tried to convey the
results of his Lex visit, was chagrined to learn that instead of
looking for the King in Nice he was expected lo wait for a
consignment of canned salmon w Geneva One thing though,
came out clearly* next time he should nol telephone, but wire
or write.

Line 470: Negro

We were talking one day about Prejudice Earlier, at lunch
in the Faculty Club, Prot. H *s guest, a decrepit emeritus from
Boston — whom his host described with deep respect as “a true
Patrician, a real blue-blooded Brahmin” (the Brahmin’s grand-
sire sold braces in Belfast) — had happened to say quite natu-
rally and debonairly, in allusion to the origins of a not very
engaging new man in the College Library, “one of the Chosen
People, I understand” (enunciated with a small snort of com-
fortable relish); upon which Assistant Professor Misha Gor-
don, a red-haired musician, had roundly remarked that “of
course, God might choose His people but man should choose
his expressions.”

As we strolled back, my friend and I, to our adjacent castles,
under the sort of light April ram that in one of his lyrical
poems he calls:

A rapid pencil sketch of Spring

Commentary 155

Shade said that more than anything on earth he loathed
Vulgarity and Brutality, and that one found these two ideally
united in racial prejudice. He said that, as a man of letters,
he could not help preferring “is a Jew” to “is Jewish” and “is
a Negro” to “js colored”, but immediately added that this way
of alluding to two kinds of bias in one breath was a good ex-
ample of careless, or demagogic, lumping (much exploited by
Left Wingers 1 since it erased the distinction between two his-
torical bells diabolical persecution and the barbarous tradi-
tions of slavery On the other hand (he admitted) the tears of
al ill-treated human beings, throughout the hopelessness of
all time, mathematicallv equaled each other and perhaps (he
thought) one did not err too much m tracing a family likeness
(tensing of simian nostrils, sickening dulling of eyes) be-
tween the )dsmme-belt lyncher and the mvstical anti-Semite
when under the influence of their pet obsession^. I said that a
voung Negro gardener (see note to line 998) whom I h£ti re-
cently hired — soon after the dismissal of an unforgettable
roomer (see Foioword) — invariably used the word “colored.”
As a duller m old and new words (observed Shade) he
strongly objected to \hat epithet not only because it was
artistically misleading, but also because its sense depended too
much upon application and applier Many competent Negroes
(he agreed) consideied it to be the onlv dignified word, emo-
tionally neutral ind ethically inoffensive, their endorsement
obliged decent non-Negroes to follow their lead, and poets do
not like to be ted, but the genteel adore endorsements and now
use “colored man” tor “Negio” as they do nude” for “naked”
O'* “perspiration ’ ior “sweat”; although ol course (he con-
ceded) there might be tunes when tie poet welcomed the
dimple of a m.ublt haunch ui “nude o r an appropriate beadi-
ness in “perspiration ’ One also heard tt used (he continued)
by the prejudiced as a jocular euphemism in a darky anecdote
when something lunnv is said or done by “the colored gentle-
man” (a sudden brother here of ' the Hebrew gentleman” in
Victorian novelettes )

J had not quite understood his artistic objection to “colored.”
He explained it thus Figures m the fir*r scientific works on
flowers, birds, butterflies and so forth were hand-painted by
diligent aquarellists In defective or piemature publications
the figures on some plates remained blanl Fhe juxtaposition
of the phrases “a white” and “a colored man” always reminded

156

PALE FIRE

my poet, .so imperiously as to dispel their accepted sense, of
those outlines one longed to fill with their lawful colors—
the green and purple of an exotic plant, the solid blue of a
plumage, the geranium bar of a scalloped wing “And more-
over [he said] we, whites, are not white at all, we are mauve
at birth, then tea-rose, and later all kinds of repulsive colois ”

Line 475 A watchman. Father Time

The reader should notice the nice response to line 3 1 2.

Line 490 E\e

Fxe obviously stands tor Exton, a factory town on the south
short of Omega l ake It h is a rather famous natural history
museum with many showcases containing birds collected and
mounted by Samuel Shade.

Line 493 She took her poor )oung life

The following nok is not an apolorv of suicide — it is the
simple and sober description of i spintual situation

The more luud and overwhelming om’s bthtf m Provi-
dence, the gieatei the temptation to get it ov^r vuth, this busi-
ness of life, but the greater too onc\ tear of the tcmhle sm
implicit in scif-destniclion Let us first consider the tempta-
tion. As more thoioughh dismissed elsewhere in this com-
mentary (see note to line ^50), a serious conception of any
form of afterldc inevitabi) and necessarily presupposes some
degiee of believe in Providence, and, conveiscly, deep Chris-
tian faith presupposes some belie! in some sort of spiritual
survival Ihe vision of that survival need not be a rational one,
i e , need not present the precise features oi personal fanucs or
the general atmosphere of a subtropical Oriental park In tact,
a good Zcmblan C hnstian is taught that true laith is not there
to supply pictuies or maps, but that it should quietly content
itself with a warm haze of pleasurable anticipation To take a
homely example, little Christopher’s family is about to migrate
to a distant colony where his father has been assigned to a life-
time post Little Christopher, a frail lad of nine or ten, relics
completely (so completely, in fact, as to blot out the very
awareness of this reliance) on his elders’ arranging all the de-
tails of departure, passage and arrival He cmnot imagine,
nor does he try to imagine, the particular aspects of the new
place awaiting him but he is dimly and comfortably con*

Commentary 157

vinccd that it Will be even better than his homestead, with the
big oak, and the mountain, and his pony, and the park, and
the stable, and Grimm, the old groom, who has a way of
fondling him whenever nobody is around.

Something of this simple trust we too should have. With
this divine mist of utter dependence permeating one’s being,
no wonder one is tempted, no wonder one weighs on one's
palm with a dreamy smile the compact firearm in its case of
suede leather hardly bigger than a castlegate key or a boy’s
seamed purse, no wonder one peers over the parapet into an
inciting abyss.

[ am choosing these images rather casually. There are purists
who maintain that a gentleman should use a brace of pistols,
one for each temple, or a bare botkin (note the correct spell-
ing), and that ladies should either swallow a lethal dose or
drown with clumsy Ophelia. Humbler humans have preferred
sundry forms of suffocation, and minor poets have even "tried
such fancy releases as vein tapping in the quadruped tub of a
drafiy boardinghouse bathroom. All this is uncertain and
messy. Of the not very many ways known of shedding one’s
body, falling, falling, falling is the supreme method, but you
have to select \ our sill or ledge ver v carefully so as not to hurt
yourself or others. Jumping from a high bridge is not recom-
mended even if you cannot swim, for wind and water abound
in weird contingencies, and tragedt ought not to culminate in
a record dive or a policeman’s promotion. If you rent a cell in
the luminous waffle, room 1915, in a tall business
center hotel browing the star dust, and pull up the window,
and gently-* not fall, not jump — but roll out as you should for
air comfort, there is always the change ol knocking clean
through into your own hell a pacific roctambulator walking
his dog; m this respect a back room might be safer, especially
if giving on the roof of an old tenacious normal house far be-
low where a cat may be trusted to flash out of the way. An-
other popular take-off is a mountaintop with a sheer drop of
say 500 meters but you must find it, because you will be sur-
prised how easy it is to miscalculate your deflection offset, and
have some hidden projection, some fool or a crag, rush forth
to catch you, causing vou to bounce off it into the brush,
thwarted, mangled and unnecessarily alive. The ideal drop is
from an aircraft, your muscles relaxed, your pilot puzzled,
your packed parachute shuffled off, cast off, shrugged off-—

158

PALE FIRE

farewell, shootka (little chute) ! Down you go, but all the while
you feel suspended and buoyed as you somersault in slow mo-
tion like a somnolent tumbler pigeon, and sprawl supine on
the eiderdown of the air, or lazily turn to embrace your pillow,
enjoying every last instant ot soft, deep, death-padded life,
with the earth’s green seesaw now above, now below, and the
voluptuous crucifixion, as you stretch yourself in the growing
rush, in the nearing swish, and then your loved body’s oblitera-
tion in the Lap of the Loid If I were a poet I would certainly
make an ode to the sweet uige to close one’s eyes and sur-
render utteilv unto the perfect safety ot wooed death. Ecstat-
ically one forefeels the vastness ol the Divine Em hi ace en-
folding one’s liberated spirit, the warm bath of physical
dissolution, the universal unknown engulfing the nunusculc
unknowm that had been the only real part of one’s temporary
personality

When the soul adoies Hun Who guides it through moitd
life, when it distinguishes IIis sign at cvu\ him of the trul,
painted on ihe boulder anil notched m the fir trunk, when
every page m the book of ones peisona! tak bears His water-
mark, how can one doubt that He will dso preserve us thioueh
all eternitv 7

So what can stop one t oni effecting the transition? What
can help us to resist the mtoleiuble temptation? What can
prevent us from yielding to the burning desire tor merging in
God?

We who buirow in fillth evci) dav may be forgiven perhaps
the one sin that cuds all sins

Line 501: L if

The yew in French It is curious that the /emhlan word fox
the weeping willow is also “j/” (the yew is to).

Line 502. The grand potato

An execrable pun, deliberately placed in this epigraphic
position to sticss lack of respect tor Death. 1 remember from
my schoolroom days Rabelais’ voi-disam "‘last words” among
other bright bits m some French manual: Je tn’en vats
chercher ie grand peut-etre .

Line 502 IPH

Good, taste and the law of libel prevent me from disclosing

Commentary 159

the real name of the respectable institute of higher philosophy
at which our poet pokes a good deal of fanciful fun in this
canto. Its terminal initials, HP, provide its students with the
abbreviation Hi-Phi, and Shade neatly parodies this in his
IPH, or If, combinations. It is situated, most picturesquely, in
a southwestern state thal must remain anonymous here.

I am also obliged to observe that I strongly disapprove of
the flippancy with which our poet treats, in this canto, certain
aspects of spiritual hope which religion alone can fulfill (see
also note to 550).

Line 549. While snubbing gods including the big G

Here indeed is the Gist of the matter And this, I think, not
only the institute (see line 517) but our poet himself missed.
For a Christian, no Beyond is acceptable or imaginable with-
out the participation of God in our eternal destiny, and this in
turn implies a condign punishment for every sin, great -und
small. My little diary happens to contain a few jottings referring
to a conversation the poet and I had on June 23 “on my terrace
after a game of chess, a draw.’* I transcribe them here only be-
cause they cast a fascinating light on his attitude toward the
subject.

1 had mentioned — I do not recall in what connection —
certain differences between mv Church and his. It should be
noted that our Zemblan brand of Protestantism is rather
closely related to the “higher” churches of the Anglican Com-
munion, but has some magnificent peculianties ot its own.
The Reformation with us had been headed by a composer of
genius; our liturgy is penetrated with rich music; our boy
choirs are the sweetest in the world. Syb‘1 Shade came from a
Catholic family but since early girlhood developed, as she
told me herself, “a religion of her own” — which is generally
synonymous, at the best, with a half-heaned attachment to
some half-heathen sect or, at the worst, with tepid atheism.
She had weaned her husband not only from the Episcopal
Church of his fathers, but from all forms of sacramental wor-
ship.

We happened to start speaking of the general present-day
nebulation of the notion of “sin,” of its confusion with the
much more carnally colored idea of “crime,” and I alluded
briefly to my childhood contacts with certain rituals of our
church. Confession with us is auricular and is conducted in a

160

PALE FIRE

richly ornamented recess, the contessionist holding a lighted
taper and standing with it beside the priest's high-backed seat
which is shaped almost exactly as the coronation chair of a
Scottish king. Little polite boy that 1 was, I always feared to
stain his purple-black sleeve with the scalding tears of wax
that kept dripping onto my knuckles, forming there tight little
crusts, and I w'as fascinated by the illumed concavity of his car
resembling a seashell or a glo&sy orchid, a convoluted recepta-
cle that seemed much too large for the disposal of my pec-
cadilloes.

shade: All the seven deadly sins are peccadilloes hut with-
out three of them, Pride, Lust and vSloth, poetry might never
have been born.

kinbote: Is it lair to base objections upon obsolete ter-
minology?

shadf: All religions are based upon obsolete terminology.

kjnbotf: What we term Original Sm can never grow ob-£
solete.

shade: I know nothing about that In tact when J was
small J thought it meant Cam killing Abel Personally, I am
with the old snuft-takers * Uhomme tv/ nt hou.

kinboti: Yet disobeying the Divine Will is a fundamental
definition of Sin.

shade: [ cannot disobey something which 1 do not know
and the reality of which 1 have the right to deny.

kinboje: Tut-tut. Do you also deny that there aie sins?

shade: I can name only two- murder, and the deliberate
infliction of pain.

kinbote: Then a man spending his life in absolute solitude
could not be a sinner?

shade: He could torture animals. He could poison !he
springs on his island. He could denounce an innocent man in
a posthumous manifesto.

KiNBOiE: Ajid so the password is — ?

shade: Pity.

kinbote: But who instilled it in us, John? Who is the Judge
of life, and the Designer ot death?

shade: Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death
should not be an even greater one.

KINBoie: Now 1 have caught you, John: once we deny a
Higher Intelligence that plans and administrates our indi-
vidual hereafters we are bound to accept the unspeakably

Commentary 161

dreadful notion of Chance reaching into eternity. Consider
the situation. Throughout eternity our poor ghosts are ex-
posed to nameless vicissitudes. There is no appeal, no advice,
no support, no protection, nothing. Poor Kinbote’s ghost, poor
Shade’s shade, may have blundered, may have taken the
wrong turn somewhere — oh, from sheer absent-mindedness,
or simply through ignorance of a trivial rule in the preposter-
ous game of nature — if there be any rules.

shade: There are rules in chess problems: interdiction of
dual solutions, for instance.

* inboie: I had in mind diabolical rules likely to be broken
by the other party as soon as we come to understand them.
That is wby goctic magic does not always work. The demons
in their prismatic malice betray the agreement between us and
them, and we are again in the chaos ot chance. Even if we
temper Chance with Necessity and allow godless determinism,
the mechanism ot cause and effect, to provide our souls after
death with the dubious solace of metastatistics, we still have to
reckon with the individual mishap, the thousand and second
highway accident ot those scheduled for Independence Day in
Hades. No-no, if we want to be serious about the hereafter let
us not begin by degrading it to the level of a science-fiction
yarn or a spiritualistic case history The idea of one's soul
plunging into limitless and chaotic afterlife with no Provi-
dence to direct her —

shade: There is always a psychopompos around the comer,
kn’t there?

mnboie* Not around that corner, John. With no Provi-
dence the soul must rely on the dust ot its husk, on the ex-
perience gathered in the course of corporeal confinement, and
cling childishly to small-town principles, local by-laws and a
personality consisting mainly of the shadows ot its own prison
bars. Such an idea is not to be entertained one instant by the
religious mind. How much more intelligent it is — even from a
proud infidel’s point of view! — to accept God’s Presence — a
faint phosphorescence at first, a pale light m the dimness of
bodily life, and a dazzling radiance after it? I too, I too, my
dear John, have been assailed in my time 1 v religious doubts*
The church helped me to fight them off. It also helped me not
to ask too much, not to demand too clear an image of what is
unimaginable. St. Augustine said —

shade: Why must one always quote St. Augustine to me?

162

PALE FIRE

kinbote: As St. Augustine said, “One can know what God
is not; one cannot know what He is.’* 1 think I know what
He is not: He is not despair, He is not terror, He is not the
earth in one’s rattling throat, not the black hum in one’s ears
fading to nothing in nothing. I know also that the world could
not have occurred fortuitously and that somehow Mind is in-
volved as a main factor in the making of the universe. In try-
ing to find the right name for that Universal Mind, or First
Cause, or the Absolute, or Nature, I submit that the Name of
God has priority.

Line 550: debris

I wish to say something about an earlier note (to line 12).
Conscience and scholarship have debated the question, and I
now think that the two lines given in that note are distorted
and tainted by wistful thinking. It is the only time m the
course of the writing of these difficult comments, that I have
tarried, in my distress and disappointment, on the brink of
falsification. I must ask the reader to ignore those two lmes
(which, I am afraid, do not even scan properly) 1 could
strike them out before publication but that would mean re-
working the entire note, or at least a consideiable part of it,
and I have no time for such stupidities

Lines 557-558 . How to locate in blackness, with a gasp, Terra
the Fair, an orbiclc oi lasp

The loveliest couplet m this canto.

Line 579: the other

Far from me be it to hint at the existence of some other
woman in my friend’s life Serenely he played the part of
exemplary husband assigned to him by his small-town ad-
mirers and was, besides, mortally afraid ot his wite More than
once did I stop the gossipmongers who linked his name with
that of one of his students (see Foreword). Of late, American
novelists, most of whom are members of a United English De-
partment that, with one thing and another, must be more
soaked in literary talent, Freudian fancies, and ignoble hetero-
sexual hist than all the rest of the world, have driven the topic
to extinction; therefore I could not face the tedium of intro-
ducing that young lady here. Anyway, I hardly knew her. One
evening I invited her to a little party with the Shades for the

Commentary 163

express purpose of refuting those rumors; and that reminds
me I should say something about the curious rituals of invita-
tion and countennvitation in bleak New Wye,

Upon referring to my little diary, I see that during the five-
month period of my intercourse with the Shades 1 was invited
to their table exactly three times. Initiation took place on
Saturday, March the 14th, when I dined at their house with
the following people; Nattochdag (whom 1 saw everyday in
bis office); Professor Gordon of the Music Department (who
completely dominated the conversation); the Head of the
Ru>sian Department (a farcical pedant of whom the less said
the better); and three or four interchangeable women (of
whom one — Mrs. Gordon, I think) was encemte, and an-
other, a perfect stranger, steadily talked to me, or rather into
me, from eight to eleven owing to an unfortunate afterdinner
distribution of available seats. My next treat, a smaller but by
no means cozier *ouper on Saturday, May 23, was attended by
Milton Stone (a new librarian, with whom Shade discussed
till midnight the classification of certain Wordsmithiana);
good old Nattochdag (whom 1 continued to see every day);
and an undeodorized Frenchwoman (who gave me a com-
plete picture of language-teaching conditions at the University
of California). The date of my third and last meal at the
Shades is not entered in my little book but I know it was one
morning in June when I brought over a beautiful plan T had
drawn of the King s Palace in Onhava with all sorls of heraldic
niceties, and a touch of gold paint that I bad some trouble in
obtaining, and was graciously urged to stay for an impromptu
lunch. 1 should add that, despite my protests, at all three meals
my vegetarian limitations of tare were nc t takeu into account,
and I was exposed to animal matter m or around, some of
the contaminated greens I might have deigned to taste. I
revanched myself rather neatly. Of a dozen or so invitations
that I extended, the Shades accepted jusi three. Every one of
these meals was built around some vegetable that l subjected
to as many exquisite metamorphoses as ParmentJer had his
pet tuber undergo. Every time I had but one additional guest
to entertain Mrs. Shade (who, if you please— thinning my
voice to a feminine pitch — was allergic to artichokes, avocado
pears, African acorns — in fact to everything beginning with an
“a**)* I find nothing more conducive to the blunting of one’&
appetite than to have none but elderly persons sitting around

164

PALE FIRE

cme at table, fouling their napkins with the disintegration of
their make-up, and surreptitiously trying, behind noncommittal
smiles, to dislodge the red-hot torture point of a raspberry seed
from between false gum and dead gum. So I had young people,
students: the first time, the son of a padishah; the second
time, my gardener; and the third time, that girl in the black
leotard, with that long white face and eyelids painted a
ghoulish green; but she came very late, and the Shades left
very early — in fact* I doubt if the confrontation lasted more
than ten minutes, whereupon I had the task of entertaining the
young lady with phonograph records far into the night when
at last she rang up somebody to accompany her to a “diner**
in Dulwich.

Line 584: The mother and the child

Es ist die Mutter mil ihrem Kind (see note to line 664).

Line 596: Points at the puddle in his basement room

We all know those dreams in which something Stygian
soaks through and Lethe leaks in the dreary terms ot defective
plumbing. Following this line, there is a false start preserved
in the draft — and I hope the reader will feel something of the
chill that ran down my long and supple spine when I dis-
covered this variant:

Should the dead murderer try to embrace
His outraged victim whom he now must face?

Do objects have a soul? Oi perish must
Alike great temples and Tanagra dust?

The last syllable of ‘Tanagra” and the first three letters of
“dust” from the name of the murderer whose shargar (puny
ghost) the radiant spirit of our poet was soon to face. “Simple
chance!” the pedestrian reader may cry. But let him try to
see, as I have tried to see, how many such combinations are
possible and plausible. “Leningrad «jed to be Petrograd?” “A
prig rad (obs. past tense of read) us?”

This variant is so prodigious that only scholarly discipline
and a scrupulous regard for the truth prevented me from in-
serting it here, and deleting four lines elsewhere (for example,
the weak lines 627-630) so as to preserve the length of the
poem.

Commentary 165

Shade composed these lines on Tuesday, July 14th. What
was Gradus doing that day? Nothing. Combinational fate rests
on its laurels. We saw him last on the late afternoon of July
10th when he returned from Lex to his hotel in Geneva, and
there we left him.

For the next four days Gradus remained fretting in Geneva.
The amusing paradox with these men of action is that they
constantly have to endure long stretches of otiosity that they
are unable to fill with anything, lacking as they do the re-
sources of an adventurous mind. As many people of little
cuhure, Gradus was a voracious reader of newspapers, pam-
phlets, chance leaflets and the multilingual literature that
comes with nose drops and digestive tablets; but this summed
up his concessions to intellectual curiosity, and since his eye-
sight was not too good, and the consumability of local news
not unlimited, he had to rely a great deal on the torpor of
sidewalk cafes and on the makeshift of sleep. %

How much happier the wide-awake indolents, the mon-
archs among men, the rich monstrous brains deriving intense
enjoyment and rapturous pangs from the balustrade of a ter-
race at nightfall, from the lights and the lake below, from the
distant mountain shapes melting into the dark apricot of the
afterglow, from the black conifers outlined against the pale
mk of the zenith, and from the garnet and green flounces of
the water along the silent, sad, forbidden shoreline. Oh my
sweet Boscobel* And the tender and terrible memories, and the
shame, and the glory, and the maddening intimations, and the
star that no party member can ever reach.

On Wednesday morning, still without news, Gradus tele-
graphed headquarters saying that he thoi 'jlit it unwise to wait
an} longer and that he would he staying : t Hotel Lazuli, Nice.

Lines 597-608: the thoughts we should roll-call, etc.

This passage should be associated in the reader's mind with
the extraordinary variant given in the preceding note, for only
a week later Tanagrw dust and “our royal hands” v ere to come
together, in real life, m real death.

Had he not fled, our Charles II might have been executed;
this would have certainly happened had he been apprehended
between the palace and the Rippleson Caves; but he sensed
those thick fingers of fate only seldom during his flight; he
sensed them feeling for him fas those of a grim old shepherd

166

PALE FIRE

checking a daughter’s virginity) when he was slipping, that
night, on the damp ferny lank of Mt. Mandevil (see note to
line 149), and next day, at a more eerie altitude, in the heady
blue, where the mountaineer becomes aware of a phantom
companion. Many times that night our King cast himself upon
the ground with the desperate resolution of resting there till
dawn that he might shift with less torment what hazard soever
he ran. (I am thinking of yet another Charles, another long
dark man above two yards high.) But it was all rather physical,
or neurotic, and I know perfectly well that my King, if caught
and condemned and led away to be shot, would have behaved
as he does in lines 606-608: thus he would look about him
with insolent composure, and thus he would

Taunt our inferiors, cheerfully deride
The dedicated imbeciles and spit
Into their eyes just for the fun of it

Let me dose this important note with a rather ami-
Darwinian aphonsm: The one who kills is always his victim’s
inferior.

Line 603: Listen to distant cocks crow

One will recall the admirable image m a recent poem by
Edsel Ford:

And often when the cock crew, shaking fire
Out of the morning and the mist) mow

A mow (in Zeniblan muwan) is the field next to a barn.

Lines 609-614: Nor can one help, etc.

This passage is different in the draft:

800 Nor can one help the exile caught by death
In a chance inn exposed to the hot breath
Of this America, this humid night:

Through slatted blinds the stripes of colored light
Grope for his bed —magicians from the past
With philtered gems — and life is ebbing fast.

fhis describes rather well the “chance inn,” a log cabin,
with a tiled bathroom, where I am trying to coordinate these

Commentary 167

notes. At first I was greatly bothered by the blare of diabolical
radio music from what 1 thought was some kind of amuse-
ment park across the road — it turned out to be camping
tourists — and 1 was thinking of moving to another place,
when they forestalled me. Now it is quieter, except for an
irritating wind rattling through the withered aspens, and
Cedarn is again a ghost town, and there are no summer fools
or spies to stare at me, and my little blue-jeaned fisherman no
longer stands on his stone in the stream, and peihaps it is
better so.

Line 615: two tongues

English and Zemblan, English and Russian, English and
Lettish, English and Estonian, English and Lithuanian, Eng-
lish and Russian, English and Ukranian, English and Polish,
English and Czech, English and Russian, English and Hun-
garian, English and Rumanian, English and Albanian, Eng-
lish and Bulgarian, English and Serbo-Croatian, English and
Russian, American and European.

Line 619: tubei ’s eye

The pun sprouts (see line 502).

Line 627: The great Starover Blue

Presumably, permission from Prof. Blue was obtained but
even so the plunging o 1 a real person, no matter how sportive
and willing, into an invented milieu where he is made to
perform in accordance with the invention, strikes one as a
singularly tasteless device, especially since other real-lite char-
acters, except members of the family, course, are pseu-
donymized in the poem.

This name, no doubt, is most tempting The star over the
blue eminently suits an astronomer though actually neither
his first nor second name bears any relation to the celestial
vault: the first was given him in memory of his grandfather,
a Russian starover (accented, incidentally, on the ultima), that
is, Old Believer (member of a schismatic sect), named
Sinyavin, from siniy, Russ, “blue” This ainyavin migrated
from Saratov to Seattle and begot a son who eventually
changed his name to Blue and married Stella Lazurchik, an
Americanized Kashube. So it goes. Honest Starover Blue will
probably be surprised by the epithet bestowed upon him by a

PALE FIRE

168

jesting Shade The writer feels moved to pay here a small
tribute to the amiable old freak, adored by everybody on the
campus and nicknamed by the students Colonel Starbottle,
evidently because of bis exceptionally convivial habits, After
all, there were other great men m our poet’s entourage —
For example, that distinguished Zemblan scholar Oscar Nat-
tochdag

Lme 629 The fate of beasts

Above this the poet wrote and struck out:

The madman’s tate

The ultimate destiny of madmen’s souls has been probed by
many 7emblan theologians who generall) hold the view that
even the most demented mind still contains within its diseased
mass a sane basic particle that survives death and suddenly
expands, bursts out as it were, in peals of healthv and tn-
umphant laughter when the world of timorous fools rnd tnni
blockheads has fallen away fai behind Personally, 1 have not
known any lunatics but have heard o< several amusing cases
m New Wye (‘ Fven m Artady am 1, ’ say Dementi?, chimed
to her gray column) Then, was for mst into a 'Indent who
went berserk l here wa an old tiemcnJousl) trustworthy
college porter who one day, in the Projection Room, showed
a squeamish coed something of which she had no doubt sten
better samples, but my favorite case is that of an Exton rail
way employee whose delusion was described to me by Mrs
H , of ail people There was a big Summer School part) at vhe
Hurleys’, to which one of my second ping-pong table partners
a pal of the Hurley boys had taken me because I knew my poet
was to lecite there something and I was beside myseJt with ap
prehension believing it might be nrty Zembb (it proved to be
an obscure poem by one of his obscure friends — my Shade
was very kind to the unsuccessful) The reader will under-
stand if I say that, at my altitude, 1 can never feci “lost” m a
crowd, but it is also true that I did not know many people at
the H ’s As I circulated, with a smile on my face and a cock-
tail in my hand, through the crush, I espied at last the top of
my poet’s head and the bright brown chignon of Mrs H.
above the backs of two adjacent chairs At the moment I ad-
vanced behind them I heard him object to some remark she
had just made:

Commentary 169

“That is the wrong word.” he said. “One should not apply it
to a person who deliberately peels off a drab and unhappy
past and replaces it with a brilliant invention. That’s merely
turning a new leaf with the left hand.”

I patted my friend on the head and bowed slightly to
Ebcrthella H. The poet looked at me with glazed eyes. She
said:

“You must help us, Mr. Kinbote: I maintain that what’s
hi* name, old — the old man, you know, at the Exton railway
station, who thought he was God and began redirecting the
train., was technically a loony, but John calls him a fellow
poet.”

“We ail arc. in a sense, poets, Madam,” 1 replied, and
offered a lighted match to my friend who had his pipe in his
teeth and was beating himself with both hands on various
parts of his torso.

I am not sure this trivial variant has been worth coifi-
ncntjng, indeed, the whole passage about the activities of the
IPJii would be quite Hudihrastic had its pedestnan verse been
ore loot shorter.

I vie 6h2' Who rides so late in the night and the wind

Thi* line, and indeed the whole passage (hues 653-6641,
allude to the well-known poem by Cocthe about the crlking,
hoary enchanter of the elf-haunted alderwood, who falls in
love with the delicate little boy of a belated traveler. One can-
not sufficiently admire the ingenious way in which Shade man-
ages to transfer something of the broken rhythm of the ballad
(a trisyllabic meter at heart) into his iambic verse:

fit f

602 Who rides so late in the night and t' e wind

663

/ / t

604 .... It is the father with his child

Goethe's two lines opening the poem come oui most ex-
actly and beautifully, with the bonus of an unexpected thyme
(also in French: vent-enfant ) , in my own language.

i i t •

Ret woren ok tpoz on natt ut \etr?

' / ft

Eto est votchez ut mid ik den.

170

PALE FIRF

Another fabulous ruler, the last king of Zembla, kept re-
peating these haunting lines to himself both in Zemblan and
German, as a chance accompaniment of drumming fatigue
and anxiety, while he Climbed through the bracken belt of the
dark mountains he had to traverse m his bid for freedom.

Lines 671-672. The Untamed Seahorse

See Browning’s My Last Duchess

See it and condemn the fashionable device of entitling a
collection of essays or a volume of poetry — or a long poem,
alas — with a phrase lifted fiom a more or less celebrated
poetical woik of the past. Such titles possess a specious glamor
acceptable maybe m the names of vintage wines and plump
courtesans but only degrading in regard to the talent that sub-
stitutes the easy allusiveness of literacy for original fancy and
shifts onto a bust’s shoulders the responsibility for omateness
smee anybody can flip through a Midsummer-Night Dream
or Romeo and Juliet , or, perhaps, the bonnets and take his
pick.

Line 678 into French

Two of these translations appeared in the August number of
the Nouvelle Re\ue Canadienne which reached College Town
bookshops m the last week of July, that is at a tunc of sadness
and mental confusion when good taste foi baric me to show
Sybil Shade some of the cutical notes 1 made in my pocket
diary.

In her veision of Donne’s famous Holy Sonnet X composed
in his widowery:

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so

one deplores the superfluous ejaculation m the second line in-
troduced there onJ> to coagulate the caesura.

Ne soit pas fibre , Mortl Quoique certain % te disent
Et puhsante et terrible t ah. Mart, tu ne Ves pas

and while the enclosed rhyme u so-overthrow” (lines 2-3) is
fortunate m finding an easy counterpart in pas-bas , one ob-
jects to the enclosing disent-prise lines (1-4) which in a

Commentary 171

French sonnet of ciua 1617 would be an impossible infringe-
ment of the visual rule.

I have no space here to list a number of other blurrings
and blunders in this Canadian version of the Dean of St.
Paul’s denouncement of Death, that slave — not only to “fate”
and “chance”— but also to u\ (“kings and desperate men”).

The other poem, Andrew Marvell’s “The Nymph on the
Death ot her Fawn,” seems to be, technically, even tougher
to stuff into French verse. If in the Donne translation, Miss
Jrondell was perfectly justified m matching hnglish pentame-
ters wdh French Alexandrines, I doubt that here she should
have preferred Vimpair and accommodated with rune syl-
lables what Marvell fits into ei^ht. In the line,.-

And, quite regardless of mv smart,

1 eit roe his fawn but took his heart

which come out as:

h t moquant bicn de ma douleur
Me laissa son faon , onus pris son cocur

one regrets that the translator, even with the help of an
ampler prosodic womb, did not mamge to fold in the long
legs of her French lawn, and render “quite regardle®* of by
‘sam h moindre * gard pour 1 * or something of the soil.
Further on, the couplet

Th\ love was far more better hau
The lose of false and cruel m a

though translated literally :

Que ion amour 6tait t >rt weitleur
Qu* amour d’homme trail trcmpiut

is not as pure idiomatically as might seem at m t glance. And
finally, the lovely closule:

Had it lived long it would have been
Lilies without, roses within

.172

PALE FIRE

contains in our lady’s French not only a solecism but also
that kind of illegal run-on which a translator is guilty of,
when passing a stop sign:

II aurait £t£, s’il eut longtemps
Vecu, lys dehors, roses dedans ,

How magnificently those two lines can be mimed and
rhymed in our magic Zemblan (“the tongue oi the mirror/’
as the great Conmal has termed it) !

Id wodo bin , war id lev lan ,

Indran iz lil ut roz nitran .

Line 680: Lolita

Major hurricanes are given feminine names in America.
The feminine gcndci is suggested not so much by the sc\ of
furies and harridans as by a general professional application
Thus any machine is a she to its fond user, and any fire (even
a “pale” one!) is she to the fireman, as ssater is she to the
passionate plumber Why our poet chose to give his 1958
hurricane a little-used Spanish name (sometimes given to
parrots) instead of Linda or Lois, is no! clear.

Line 681: gloomy Russians spied

There is really nothing metaphysical, or racial, about this
gloom. It is merely the outward sign of congested nationalism
and a provincial’s sense of inferiority — that dreadful blend
so typical of Zemblans under the Extremist rule and of Rus-
sians under the Soviet regime. Ideas in modern Russia are
machine-cut blocks coming in solid colois; the nuance is out-
lawed, the interval walled up, the curve grossly stepped.

However, not all Russians are gloomy, and the two young
experts from Moscow whom our new government engaged
to locate the Zemblan crown jewels turned out to be posi-
tively rollicking. The Extremists were right in believing that
Baron Bland, the Keeper of the Treasure, had succeeded in
hiding those jewels before he jumped or fell from the North
Tower; but they did not know he had had a helper and were
wrong in thinking the jewels must be looked for in the palace
which the gentle white-haired Bland had never left except
to die. I may add, with pardonable satisfaction, that they

Commentary 173

were, and still are, cached in a totally different — and quite
unexpected — corner of Zembla.

In an earlier note (to line 130) the reader has already
glimpsed those two treasure hunters at work. After the King’s
escape and the belated discovery of the secret passage, they
continued their elaborate excavations until the palace was all
honeycombed and partly demolished, an entire wall of one
room collapsing one night, to yield, in a niche whose presence
nobody had suspected, an ancient salt cellar of bronze and
King Wigbert’s drinking horn; but you will never find our
crown, necklace and scepter.

All this is the rule of a supernal game, all this is the im-
mutable fable of fate, and should not be construed as reflect-
ing on the efficiency of the two Soviet experts — who, anyway,
were to be marvelously successful on a later occasion with
another job (see note to line 747). Their names (probably
fictilious) were Andronnikov and Niagarin One has seldbm
seen, at least among waxworks, a pair of more pleasant,
presentable chaps. Everybody admired their clean-shaven jaws,
elementary facial expressions, wavy hair, and perfect teeth.
Tall handsome Andronnikov seldom smiled but the crinkly
little ruys of his orbital flesh bespoke infinite humor while
the min furrows descending from the sides of his shapely
nostrils evoked glamorous associations with flying aces and
sagebrush heroes. Niagarin, on the other hand, was of com-
paratively short stature, had somewhat more rounded, albeit
quite manly features, and every now and then would flash
a big boyish smile remindful of scoutmasters with something
to hide, or those gentlemen who cheat in television quizzes.
It was delightful to watch the two splendid Sovietchiks run-
ning about in the yard and kicking a chalk-dusty, thumping-
tight soccer ball (looking so large and bald in such surround-
ings). Andronnikov could tap-play it on his toe up and down
a dozen times before punting it rocket straight into the mel-
ancholy, surprised, bleached, harmless heavens; and Niagarin
could imitate to perfection the mannerisms of a certain stu-
pendous Dynamo goalkeeper. They used to hand out to the
kitchen boys Russian caramels with plums or cherries de-
picted on the rich luscious six-cornered wrappers that enclosed
a jacket of thinner paper with the mauve mummy inside; and
lustful country girls were known to creep up along the
drungen (bramble-choked footpaths) to the very foot of the

174

PALE FIRB

bulwark when the two silhouetted against the now flushed
sky sang beautiful sentimental military duets at eventide on
the rampart. Niagarin had a soulful tenor voice, and Andron-
nikov a hearty baritone, and both wore elegant jackboots of
soft black leather, and the sky turned away showing its ethe-
real vertebrae.

Niagarin who had lived in Canada spoke English and
French; Andronnikov had some German The little Zemblan
they knew was pronounced with that comical Russian accent
that gives vowels a kind of didactic plenitude of sound. They
were considered models of dash by the Extremist guards, and
my dear Odonello once earned a harsh reprimand from the
dommandant by not having withstood the temptation to imi-
tate their walk, both moved with an identical little swagger,
and both were conspicuously bandy-legged.

When I was a child, Russia enjeved quite a vogue at the
court of Zembla but that was a different Russia — a Russia
that hated tyrants and Philistines, injustice and cruelty, the
Russia of ladies and gentlemen and liberal aspirations. We
may add that Charles the Beloved couUl boast of some Rus-
sian blood In medieval times two of his ancestors had married
Novgorod princesses. Queen Yaruga (reigned 1799-1800)
his great-gieat-granddam, was half Russian; and most his-
torians believe that Yaruga’s only child Igor was not the son
of Uran the Last f reigned 1798-179*0 hut the fruit of her
amours with the Russian adventurer Hodinski, her gohart
(court jester) and a poet of genius, said to have forged in his
spare time a famous old Russian chanson do geste, generally
attributed to an anon) mous bard ot the twelfth century.

Line 682 . Lang

A modern Fra Pandolf no doubt. I do not remember seeing
any such painting around the house. Or did Shade have in
mind a photographic portrait? There was one such portrait
on the piano, and another in Shade's study. How much fairer
it would have been to Shade's and his friend's reader if the
lady had deigned answer some of my urgent queries.

Line 691: the attack

John Shade's heart attack (Oct. 17 ) practically co-
incided with the disguised king’s arrival in America where
be descended by parachute from a chartered plane piloted

Commentary 175

by Colonel Montacute, in a field of hay-feverish, rank-flower-
ing weeds, near Baltimore whose oriole is not an oriole. It
had all been perfectly timed, and he was still wrestling with
the unfamiliar French contraption when the Rolls-Royce bom
Sylvia O'DonnelTs manor turned toward his green silks from
a road and approached along the mowntrop, its fat wheels
bouncing disapprovingly and its black shining body slowly
gliding along. Fain would I elucidate this business of para-
chuting but (it being a matter of mere sentimental tradition
rather than a useful manner of transportation) this is not
strictly necessary in these notes to Pale Fire . While Kingsley,
the British chauffeur, an old and absolutely faithful retainer,
was doing his best to cram the bulky and ill-folded parachute
into the boot, I relaxed on a shooting stick he had supplied
me with, sipping a delightful Scotch and water from the car
bar and glancing (amid an ovation of crickets and that vortex
of yellow and maroon butterflies that so pleased ChateaubriaqjJ
on his arrival in America) at an article in The New York
Times in which Sylvia had vigorously and messily marked out
in red pencil a communication from New Wye which told
of the “distinguished poet’s’* hospitalization. I had been look-
ing forward to meeting my favorite American poet who, as
I felt sure at the moment, would die long before the Spring
Term, but the disappointment was little more than a mental
shrug of accepted regret, and discarding the newspaper, I
looked around me with enchantment and physical wellbeing
despite the congestion in my nose. Beyond the field the great
green steps of turf ascended to the multicolored coppices;
one could see above them the white brow of the manor;
clouds melted into the blue. Suddenly I sneezed, and sneezed
again. Kingsley offered me another drink but I declined it,
and democratically joined him in the front seat. My hostess
was in bed, suffering from the aftereffects of a special injec-
tion that she had been given in anticipation of a journey
to a special place in Africa. In answer to my “Well, how are
you?** she murmured that the Andes had been simply mar-
velous, and then in a slightly less indolent tone of voice in-
quired about a notorious actress with whom her son was said
to be living in sin. Odon. I said, had promised me he would
not marry her. She inquired if I had had a good hop and
dingled a bronze bell. Good old Sylvia! She had in common
with Fleur de Fyler a vagueness of manner, a languor of

176

PAl E FIRE

demeanor which was partly natural and partly cultivated as
a convenient alibi lor when she was drunk, and in some
wondertul way she managed to combine that indolence with
volubility reminding one of a slow-speaking ventriloquist who
is interrupted by his garrulous doll. Changeless Sylvial During
three decades I had seen from time to time, from palace to
palace, that same flat nut-colored bobbed hair, those childish
pale-blue e)es, the vacant sisule, the stylish long legs, the
willowy hesitating movements
A tray with fruit and drinks was brought m by a jeune
beaut# , as dear Marcel would have put it, nor could one help
recalling another author, Gide the Lucid, who praises in his'
African notes so wai mly the satiny skm of black imps.

“You nearh lost the opportunity to meet our brightest
star,” said Sylvia who was Wordsmilh University's mam trus-
tee (and, in point of fact, had been solelv responsible for
arranging my amusing lectureship there) 4 1 have just called
up the college — yes, take that footstool- -and he is much
better Try this mascana fruit, I got it especially for you,
but the boy is strictly heteio, and, generallv speaking. Your
Majesty will have to be quite careful from now on I’m sure
you’ll like it up theie though I wish I could figure out why
anybody should be so keen on teaching Ztmblan I think
Disa ought to come too I have rented for vou what they say
is their best house, and it is neai the Shades "

She knew them very slightly but had heard irnny endear-
ing stones about the poet from Billy Reading, “one of the
very few American college presidents who know I atm” And
let me add here how much I was honoied a fortnight later
to meet in Washington that liinp-lookmg, absent-minded,
shabbily dressed splendid American gentleman whose mind
was a library and not a debating hall Next Monday Sylvia
flew away but I stayed on for a while, resting from my ad-
ventures, musing, reading, taking notes, and riding a lot m
the lovely countryside with two charming ladies and their
shy little groom I have often felt when leaving a place that
I had enjoyed, somewhat like a tight cork that is drawn out
for the sweet dark wine to be drained, and then you are off
to new vineyards and conquests. I spent a couple of pleasant
months visiting the libraries of New York and Washington,
flew to Florida for Christmas, and when ready to start lor
my new Arcady deemed it nice and dutiful to send the poet

Commentary 177

a polite note congratulating him on his restored health and
jokingly “warning” him that beginning with February he
would have a very ardent admirer of his for neighbor. I never
received any answer, and my civility was never recalled later
so I suppose it got lost among the many “fan” letters that
literary celebrities receive, although one might have expected
Sylvia or somebody to have told the Shades of my arrival.

The poet’s recovery turned out indeed to be very speedy
and would have to be called miraculous had there been any-
thing organically wrong with his heart. There was not; a
poet’s nerves can play the queerest tricks but they also can
quickly recapture the rhythm of health, and soon John Shade,
in his chair at the head of an oval tabic, was again speaking
of bis favorite Pope to eight pious young men, a crippled
extramural woman and three coeds, one of them a tutorial
dream. He had been told not to curtail his customary exer-
cise, such as walks, but 1 must admit J experienced mysqjf
palpitations and cold sweats at the sight of that precious
old man wielding rude garden tools or squirming up the col-
lege hall stairs as a Japanese fish up a cataract. Incidentally:
the reader should not lake too seriously or too literally the
passage about the aleit doctor (an alert doctor, w'ho as I well
know once confused neuralgia with cerebral sclerosis). As I
gathered from Shade himself, no emergency incision was per-
formed; the heart was not compressed by hand; and if it
stopped pumping at all, the pause must have been very brief
and so to speak superficial. All this of couise cannct detract
fiom the great epic beauty of the passage. (Lines 691 697)

line 697: Conclusive destination

Gradus landed at the Cote d’Azur airport in the early
afternoon of July 15. Despite his worries he could not
help being impressed by the torrent of magnificent trucks,
agile motor bicycles and cosmopolitan private cars on the
Promenade. He remembered and disliked the torrid heat and
the blinding blue of the sea. Hotel Lazuli, where before World
War Two he had spent a week with a consumptive Bosnian
terrorist, when it was a squalid, running-water place fre-
quented by young Germans, was now a squalid, running-
water place frequented by old Frenchmen. It was situated
in a transverse street, between two thoroughfares parallel to
the quay, and the ceaseless roar of crisscross traffic mingling

178

PALE FIRE

with the grinding and banging of construction work proceed-
ing under the auspices of a crane opposite the hotel (which
had been surrounded by a stagnant calm two decades earlier)
was a delightful surpise for Gradus, who always liked a little
noise to keep his mind off things. ( u £a distrait " as he said
to the apologetic hostlerwife and her sister).

After scrupulously washing his hands, he went out again,
a tremor of excitement running like fever down his crooked
spine. At one of the tables of a sidewalk caf6 on the corner
of his street and the Promenade, a man in a bottle-green
jacket, sitting in the company of an obvious whore, clapped
both palms to his face, emitted the sound of a muffled sneeze,
and kept masking himself with his hands as he pretended to
wait for the second installment. Gradus walked along the
north side of the embankment. After stopping for a minute
before the display of a souvenir shop, he went inside, asked
the price of a little hippopotamus made of violet glass, and
purchased a map of Nice and its environs. As he walked
on to the taxi stand in rue Gambetta, he happened to notice
two young tourists in loud shirts stained with sweat, their
faces and necks a bright pink from the heat and imprudent
solarization; they carried carefully folded over their arms
the silk-lined doublebreasted coats of their wide-trousered
dark suits and did not look at our sleuth who despite his
being exceptionally unobservant felt the undulation of some-
thing faintly familiar as they brushed past. They knew noth-
ing of his presence abroad or of his interesting job; in point
of fact, only a few minutes ago had their, and his, superior
discovered that Gradus was in Nice and not in Geneva.
Neither had Gradus been informed that he would be assisted
in his quest by the Soviet sportsmen, Andronnikov and
Niagarin, whom he had casually met once or twice on the
Onhava Palace grounds when re-paning a broken window
and checking for the new government the rare Rippleson
panes in one of the ex-royal hothouses; and next moment he
had lost the thread end of recognition as he settled down
with the prudent wriggle of a short-legged person in the back
seat of an old Cadillac and asked to be taken to a restaurant
between Pellos and Cap Turc. It is hard to say what our
man's hopes and intentions were. Did he want just to peep
through the myrtles and oleanders at an imagined swimming
pool? Did he expect to hear the continuation of Gordon's

Commentary 179

bravura piece played now in another rendition, by two larger
and stronger hands? Would he have crept, pistol in hand, to
where a sun-bathing giant lay spread-eagled, a spread eagle
of hair on his chest? We do not know, nor did Gradus per*
haps know himself; anyway, he was spared an unnecessary
journey. Modem taximen are as talkative as were the barbers
of old, and even before the old Cadillac had rolled out of
town, our unfortunate killer knew that his driver’s brother
had worked in the gardens of Villa Disa but that at present
nobody lived there, the Queen having gone to Italy for the
rest of July.

At his hotel the beaming proprietress handed him a tele-
gram. It chided him in Danish for leaving Geneva and told
him to undertake nothing until further notice. It also advised
him to forget his work and amuse himself. But what (save
dreams of blood) could be his amusements? He was not
interested in sightseeing or seasiding. He had long stopp^i
drinking. He did not go to concerts. He did not gamble.
Sexual impulses had greatly bothered him at one time but
that was over. After his wife, a header in Radugovitra, had
left him (with a gypsy lover), he had lived in sin with his
mother-in-law until she was removed, blind and dropsical, to
an asylum for decayed widows. Since then he had tried several
times to castrate himself, had been laid up at the Glassman
Hospital with a severe infection, and now, at forty-four, was
quite cured of the lust that Nature, the grand cheat, puts into
us to inveigle us into propagation. No wonder the advice to
amuse himself infuriated him. I think 1 shall break this note
here.

Lines 704-707: A system, etc.

The fitting-in of the threefold “cells interlinked’’ is most
skillfully managed, and one derives logical satisfaction from
the “system” and “stem” interplay.

Lines 727-728: No, Mr. Shade . . . just half a shade

Another fine example of our poet’s special brand of com-
binational magic. The subtle pun here turns on two addi-
tional meanings of “shade” besides the obvious synonym of
“nuance.” The doctor is made to suggest that not only did
Shade retain in his trance half of his identity but that he
was also half a ghost. Knowing the particular medical man

180

PALE FIRE

who treated my friend at the time, I venture to add that he
is far too stodgy to have displayed any such wit.

Lines 734*735: probably . . . wobble . . . limp blimp . . *
unstable

A third burst of contrapuntal pyrotechnics. The poet’s plan
is to display in the very texture of his text the intricacies of
the “game” in which he seeks the key to life and death (see
lines 808-829).

Line 74]: the outer glare

On the morning of July 16 (while Shade was working
on the 698-746 section of his poem) dull Gradus, dreading
another day of enforced inactivity in sardonically sparkling,
stimulatingly noisy Nice, decided that until hunger drove him
out he would not budge from a leathern armchair in the
simulacrum of a lobby among the brown smells of his dingy
hotel Unhurriedly he went through a heap of old magazines
on a nearby table. There he sat, a little monument of taci-
turnity, sighing, puffing out his cheeks, licking his thumb
before turning a page, gaping at the pictures, and moving
his lips as he climbed down the columns of printed matter.
Having replaced everything in a neat pile, he sank back in
his chair closing and opening his gabled hands in various
constructions of tedium — when a man who had occupied a
seat next to him got up and walked into the outer glare leaving
his paper behind. Gradus pulled it into his lap, spread it out —
and froze over a strange piece of local news that caught his
eye: burglars bad btoken into Villa Disa and ransacked a
bureau, taking from a jewel box a number of valuable old
medals.

Here was something to brood upon. Had this vaguely un-
pleasant incident some bearing on his quest? Should he do
something about it? Cable headquarters? Hard to word suc-
cinctly a simple fact without having it look like a crypto-
gram. Airmail a clipping? He was in his room working on the
newspaper with a safety razor blade when there was a bright
rap-rap at the door. Gradus admitted an unexpected visitor —
one of the greater Shadows, whom he had thought to be
onhava-onhava (“far, far away”), in wild, misty, almost leg-
endary Zemblal What stunning conjuring tricks our magical

Commentary 181

mechanical age plays with old mother space and old father
time!

He was a merry, perhaps overmerry, fellow, in a green
velvet jacket. Nobody liked him, but he certainly had a keen
mind. His name, Izumrudov, sounded rather Russian but
actually meant “of the Umruds,” an Eskimo tribe sometimes
seen paddling their umyaks (hide-lined boats) on the em-
erald waters of our northern shores. Grinning, he said friend
Gradus must get together his travel documents, including a
health certificate, and take the earliest available jet to New
York. Bowing, he congratulated him on having indicated with
such phenomenal acumen the right place and the right way.
Yes, after a thorough perlustration ot the loot that Andron
and Niagarushka had obtained from the Queen’s rosewood
writing desk (mostly bills, and treasured snapshots, and those
silly medals) a letter from the King did turn up giving his ad-
dress which was of all places — Our man, who interrupted t^
herald of success to say he had never — was bidden not to
display so much modesty. A slip of paper was now produced
on which Izuraiudos, shaking with laughter (death is hilari-
ous), wrote out ior Gradus their client's alias, the name of
the university ft here he taught, and that of the town where
it was situated. No, the slip was not for keeps. He could
keep it only while memorizing it. This brand of paper (used
by macaroon makers) was not only digestible but delicious.
The gay green vision withdrew- -to resume his whoring no
doubt. How one hates such men!

Lines 747-748: a story in the magazine about a Mrs. Z.

Anybody having access to a good library could, no doubt,
easily trace that story to its source and find the name of the
lady; but such humdium pottoiings are beneath true scholar-
ship.

Line 768: address

At this point my leader may be amused by my allusion to
John Sbade in a letter (of which I fortunately preserved a
carbon copy) that J wrote to a correspondent living in south-
ern France on April 2,

My dear, you are absurd. I do not give you, and will

not give you or anybody, my home address not because I

182

PALE FIRE

fear you might look me up, as you are pleased to conjec-
ture: all my mail goes to my office address. The suburban
houses here have open letter boxes out in the street, and
anybody can cram them with advertisements or purloin
letters addressed to me (not out of mere curiosity, mind
you, but from other, more sinister, motives). 1 send this
by air and urgently repeat the address Sylvia gave you:
Dr. C. Kinbote, Kinbote (hot “Charles X. Kingbot, Esq.,’*
as you, or Sylvia, wrote; please , be more careful — and
more intelligent), Wordsmith University, New Wye, Appa-
lachia, USA.

I am not cross with you but 1 have all sorts of worries,
and my nerves are on edge. 1 believed — believed deeply
and candidly — in the affection of a person who lived here,
under my roof, but have been hurt and betrayed, as never
happened in the days of my forefathers, who could have
the offender tortured, though of course I do not wish to
have anybody tortured

It has been dreadfully cold here, but thank God now a
regular northern winter has turned into a southern spring.

Do not try to explain to me what \our lawyer tells vou
but have him explain it to my lawyer, and he will explain
it to me.

Mv work at the university is pleasant, and J have a most
charming neighbor — now do not sigh and raise your eye-
brows, my dear — he is a very old gentlemen — the old gen-
tleman in fact who was responsible for that bit about the
ginkgo tree in your green album (see again — 1 mean the
reader should see again — the note to line 49).

It might be safer if you aid not write me too often, my
dear.

Line 782: your poem

An image of Mont Blanc’s “blue-shaded buttresses and
sun-creamed domes” is fleetingly glimpsed through the cloud
of that particular poem which I wish 1 could quote but do
not have at hand. The “white mountain” of the lady’s dream,
caused by a misprint to tally with Shade’s “white fountain,”
makes a thematic appearance here, blurred as it were by the
lady’s grotesque pronunciation.

Commentary

183

Line 802. mountain

The passage 797 (second part of line) -809, on the poet’s
sixty-fifth card, was composed between the sunset of July 18
and the dawn of July 19. That morning I had prayed in two
different churches (on either side, as it were, of my Zemblan
denomination, not represented in New Wye,} and had strolled
home in an elevated state of mind. There was no cloud in the
wistful sky, and the very earth seemed to be sighing after our
Lord Jesus Christ. On such sunny, sad mornings I always feel
in my bones that thexe is a chance yet of my not being ex-
cluded from Heaven, and that salvation maj be granted to
me despite the frozen mud and horror in my heart As T was
ascending with bowed head the gravel path to my poor rented
house, I heard with absolute distinction, as if he were stand-
ing at my shoulder and speakmg loudlv, as to a slightly
deaf man, Shades voice say: “Come tonight, Charlie.” T
looked around me m awe and wonder: 1 was quite alone. 1
af once telephoned. The Shades were out, said the cheeky
ancillula, an obnovious little lan who came to cook for them
on Sundays and no doubt dreamt of getting the old poet to
cuddle her some wifeless day. I lelelcphoned two hours later;
got, as usual, Sybil; insisted on talking to mv friend (my
“messages” were ncvei transmitted), obtained him, and asked
bun as calmly as possible what he had been doing around
noon when I had heard him like a big bird in my garden.
He could not quite remember, said wait a minute, he had
been playing golf with Paul (whoever that was), oi at least
watching Paul play with another colleague. I cried that I
must see him fn the evening and all at once, with no reason
at all, burst into tears, flooding the telephone and gasping
for breath, a paroxysm which bad not happened to me since
Bob left me on March 30. There was a flurry of confabula-
tion between the Shades, and then John said: “Charles, listen.
Let’s go for a good ramble tonight, I’ll meet you at eight.”
It was my second good ramble since July 6 (that unsatisfac-
tory nature talk); the third one, one July 21, was to be ex*
cccdingly brief.

Where was I? Yes, trudging along again as in the old days
with John, in the woods of Arcady, under a salmon sky.

4< Well,” I said gaily, “what were you writing about last
night, John? Your study window was simply blazing.”

184

PALE FIRE

‘'Mountains,” he answered.

The Bera Range, an erection of veined stone and shaggy
firs, rose before me in all its power and pride. The splendid
news made my heart pound, and I telt that I could now, in
my turn, afford to be generous. I begged my friend not to
impart to me anything more if he did not wish it. He said
yes, he did not, and begain bewailing the difficulties of his
self-imposed task. He calculated that during the last twenty-
four hours his brain had put m, roughly, a thousand minutes
Of work, and had produced fifty lines (say, 797-847) or one
syllable every two minutes. He had finished his Third, pe-
nultimate, Canto, and had started on Canto Four, bis last
(see Foreword, see Foreword, at once), and wou : d I mind
very much it wc started to go home — though it was only
around nine — so that he could plunge back into his chaos
and drag out of it, with all its wet stars, his cosmos?

How could I say no? That mountain air had gone to my
head: he was reassembling my Zemblal

Lines 803: a misprint

Translators of Shade’s poem are bound to have trouble
with the transformation, at one stroke, of 'mountain" into
“fountain”: it cannot he rendered in French or Geirnan, or
Russian, or Zemblan; so the translator will have to put it into
one of those footnotes that are the togue’s galleries of words.
However! There exists to my knowledge one absolutely ex-
traordinary, unbelievably elegant case, where not only two,
but three words are involved. The story itself is trivial enough
(and probably apocryphal). A newspaper account of a Rus-
sian tsar’s coronation had, instead of korom (crown), the
misprint vorona (crow), and when next day this was apolo-
getically “corrected,” it got misprimed a second time as korova
(cow). The artistic correlation between the crown-crow-cow
series and the Russian korona-vorona-korova series is some-
thing that would have, i am sure, enraptured my poet. I have
seen nothing like it on lexical playfields and the odds against
the double coincidence defy computation.

Line 810: a web of sense

One of the five cabins of which this motor court consists
is occupied by the owner, a blear-eyed, seventy-year-old man
whose twisted limp reminds me of Shade. He runs a small

Commentary 185

gas station nearby, sells worms to fishermen, and usually does
not bother me, but the other day he suggested 1 “grab any
old book” from a shelf in his room. Not wishing to offend
him, I cocked my head at them, to one side, and then to
the other, but they were all dog-eared paperback mystery
stories and did not rate more than a sigh and a smile. He
said wait a minute — and took from a bedside recess a bat-
tered clothbound treasure. “A great book by a great guy,”
the letters of Franklin Lane. “Used to see a lot of him in
Rainier Park when I was a young ranger up there. You take
it for a couple of days. You won’t regret itP

1 did not. Here is a passage that curiously echoes Shade’s
tone at the end of Canto Three. It comes from a manuscript
fragment written by Lane on May 17, 1921, on the eve of
bis death, after a major operation: “And if I had passed into
that otbei land, whom would J have sought? . . . Aristotle!
— Ah, there would be a man to talk with! What satisfaction
to «*ee him take like reins from between his fingers, the long
ribbon of man's life and trace it through the mystifying maze
of all the wondciful adventure. . . . The crooked made
straight. Hie dacdalian plan simplified by a look from above
— smeared out as it were by the splotch of some master
thumb that made the whole involuted, boggling thing one
beautiful straight line.”

Line 81 9; Playing a game of woiids

My illustrious friend showed a chddish predilection for all
sorts of word games and especially for so-called word golf.
He would intei rupf the flow of a prismatic conversation to
indulge in this particular pastime, and naturally it would
have been boorish of me to refuse playing with him. Some
of my records are: hate-love in three, lass-male in four, and
live-dead in five (with ‘lend” in the middle).

Line 822: killing a Balkan king

Fervently would 1 wish to report that the reading in the
draft was:

killing a Zemblan king

— but alas, it is not so: the card with the draft has not been
preserved by Shade.

186

PALE FIRE

Line 830: Sybil, it is

This elaborate rhyme comes as an apotheosis crowning
the entire canto and synthesizing the contrapuntal aspects of
its “accidents and possibilities.”

Lines 835-838. Now l shall spy, etc.

The canto, begun on July 19tb, on card sixty-eight, opens
with a typical Shadism: the cunning working-in of several
inter-echoing phrases into a jumble of enjarabments. Actu-
ally, the promise made in these four lines will not be really
kept except for the repetition of their incantatory rhythm
in lines 915 and 923-924 (leading to the savage attack in
925-930). The poet like a fiery rooster seems to flap his wings
in a preparatory burst of would-be inspiration, but the sun
does not rise. Instead of the wild poetry promised here, we
get a jest or two, a bit ot satire, and at the end ot the canto,
a wonderful radiance of tenderness and repose.

Line r 841-872. two methods of composing

Really three if we count the all-important method of rely-
ing on the flash and flute of the subliminal world and its
“mute command” (line 8 7 1).

Line 873 My best time

As my dear friend was beginning with this line his July
20 batch ot cards (card seventy-one to card seventy-six, end-
ing with lme 948), Gradus, at the Orly airport, was walking
aboard a jetliner, fastening his seat belt, reading a newspaper,
rising, soaring, desecrating the sky.

Lines 887-888: Since my biographer may be too staid or
know too little

Too staid? Know too little? Had my poor friend precognized
who that would be, he would have been spared those con-
jectures. As a matter of tact 1 had the pleasure and the honor
of witnessing (one March morning) the performance he de-
scribes in the next lines. I was going to Washington and just
before starting remembered he had said he wanted me to look
up something m the Library of Congress. I hear so clearly in
my mind's ear Sybil’s cool voice saying: “But John cannot see
you, he is in bis bath”; and John’s raucous roar coming from

Commentary 187

the bathroom: “Let him in, Sybil, he won’t rape me!” But
neither he nor I could recall what that something was.

Lines 894: a king

Pictures of the King had not infrequently appeared in
America during the first months of the Zemblan Revolution.
Every now and then some busybody on the campus with a
retentive memory, or one of the clubwomen who were always
after Shade and his eccentric friend, used to ask me with
the inane meaningfulness adopted in such cases if anybody
had told me how much 1 resembled that unfortunate mon-
arch. I would counter with something on the lines of “all
Chinese look alike” and change the subject. One day, how-
ever, in the lounge of the Faculty Club where I lolled sur-
rounded by a number of my colleagues, I had to put up with
a particularly embarrassing onset. A visiting German lecturer
from Oxford kept exclaiming, aloud and under his breatff,
that the resemblance was “absolutely unheard of,” and when
I negligently obseived that all bearded Zemblans resembled
one another — and that, in fact, the name Zembla is a cor-
ruption not of the Russian zemlya , but of Semblerland, a
land of reflections, of “resemblers”— my tormentor said: “Ah,
yes, but King Charles wore no beard, and yet it is his very
face! 1 had fhe added] the honor of being seated within a
few yards of the royal box at a Sport Festival in Onhava
which 1 visited with my wife, who is Swedish, in 1956. We
have a photograph of him at home, and her sister knew very
well the mother of one of his pages, an interesting woman.
Don’t you see [almost tugging at Shade’s lapel] the astound-
ing similarity of features — of the upper part ot the face, and
the eyes, yes, the eyes, and the nose bridge?”

“Nay, sir” [said Shade, refolding a leg and ^lightly rolling
in his armchair as wont to do when about to deliver a pro-
nouncement] “there is no resemblance at all I have seen the
King in newsreels, and there is no resemblance. Resemblances
are the shadows of differences. Different people see different
similarities and simitar differences.”

Good Netochka, who had been looking singularly uncom-
fortable during this exchange, remarked in his gentle voice
how sad it was to think that such a “sympathetic ruler” had
probably perished in prison.

A professor of physics now joined in. He was a so-called

188

PALE FIRE

Pink, who believed in what so-called Pinks believe in (Pro-
gressive Education, the Integrity of anyone spying for Rus-
sia, Fall-outs occasioned solely by US-made bombs, the exist-
ence in the near past of a McCarthy Era, Soviet achievements
including Dr. Zhivago, and so torth): “Your regrets are
groundless’* [said he]. “That sorry ruler is known to have
escaped disguised as a nun; but whatever happens, or has
happened to him, cannot interest the Zemblan people. History
has denounced him, and that is his epitaph.”

Shade: ‘True, sir. In due time history will have denounced
everybody. The King may be dead, or he may be as much
alive as you and Kinbote, but let us respect facts. I have
it from him [pointing to'me] that the widely circulated stuff
about the nun is a vulgar pro-Extiemist fabrication. The
Extremists and their friends invented a lot of nonsense to
conceal their discomfiture; but the truth is that the King
walked out of the palace, and crossed the mountains, and
left the country, not in the black garb of a pale spinster but
dressed as an athlete in scarlet wool.”

“Strange, strange,” said the German visitor, who by some
quirk of alderwood ancestry had been alone to catch the
eerie note that had throbbed by and was gone.

Shade [smiling and massaging my knee]: “Kings do not
die — they only disappear, eh, Charles?”

“Who said that?” asked sharply, as if coming out ot a
trance, the ignorant, and always suspicious, Head of the Eng-
lish Department

“Take my own case,” continued my dear friend ignoring
Mr. H. T have been said to resemble at least four people:
Samuel Johnson; the lovingly reconstructed ancestor of man
in the Exton Museum; and two local characters, one being
the slapdash disheveled hag who ladles out the mash in the
Levin Hall cafeteria.”

“The third in the witch row,” I precised quaintly, and
everybody laughed.

“I would rather say,” remarked Mr. Pardon — American
History — “that she looks like Judge Goldsworth” (“One of
us,” interposed Shade inclining his head), “especially when
he is real mad at the whole world after a good dinner.”
s “I hear,” hastily began Netochka, “that the Goldsworths
are having a wonderful time — ”

“What a pity I cannot prove my point,*’ muttered the tena-

Commentary 189

cious German visitor. “If only there was a picture here*
Couldn’t there be somewhere — ”

“Sure/’ said young Emerald and left his seat.

Professor Pardon now spoke to me: “I was undfer the im-
pression that you were born in Russia, and that your name
was a kind of anagram of Botkin or Botkine?”

Kinbote: “You are confusing me with some refugee from
Nova Zembla” [sarcastically stressing the “Nova”].

“Didn’t you tell me, Charles, that kinbote means regicide
in your language?” asked my dear Shade.

“Yes, a king’s destroyer,” I said (longing to explain that
a king who sinks his identity in the mirror of exile is in a
sense just that).

Shade [addressing the German visitor]: “Professor Kinbote
is the author of a remarkable book on surnames. I believe
[to me] there exists an English translation?”

“Oxford, ”1 replied.

“You do know Russian, though?” said Pardon. “I think I
heard you, the other dav, talking to — what’s his name— oh,
my goodness” [laboriously composing his lips].

Shade: “Sir. we all find it difficult to attack that name”
[laughing].

Professor Hurley: “Think of the French word for ‘tire’:
punoo

Shade: “Why, sir, I am afraid you have only punctured
the difficult)” [laughing uproariously],

“Flatman,” quipped I. “Yes,” I went on, turning to Pardon,
“I certainly do speak Russian. You see, it was the fashionable
language par excellence, much more so than French, among
the nobles of Zembla at least, and at its court. Today, of
course, all this has changed. Jt is now the lower classes who
are forcibly taught to speak Russian.”

“Aren’t we, too, trying to teach Russian in our schools?”
said Pink.

In the meantime, at the other end of the room, young
Emerald had been communing with the bookshelves. At this
point he returned with the T-Z volume of an illustrated en-
cyclopedia.

“Well,” said he, “here he is, that king. But look, he is
young and handsome” (“Oh, that won’t do,” wailed the Ger-
man visitor.) “Young, handsome, and wearing a fancy uni-
form,” continued Emerald. “Quite the fancy pansy, in fact”

190

PALE FIRE

“And you/’ 1 said quietly, “are a foul-minded pup in a
cheap green jacket.”

“But what have I said?” the young instructor inquired
of the company, spreading out his palms like a disciple in
Leonardo’s Last Supper .

“Now, now,” said Shade. “I’m sure, Charles, our young
friend never intended to insult your sovereign and name-
sake.”

“He could not, even if he had wished,” I observed placidly,
turning it all into a joke.

Gerald Emerald extended his hand— which at the moment
of writing still remains in that position.

Lines 895-899: The more I weigh . . or this dewlap

Instead of these facile and revolting lines, the draft gives:

896 I have a certain liking, I admit.

For Parody, that last resort of wit:

“In nature’s strife when fortitude prevails
The victim falters and the viclor fails.”

809 Yes, reader, Pope

Line 920: little hairs stand on end

Alfred Housman, whose collection The Shropshire

Lad vies with the In Memoriam of Alfred Tennyson
(1809-1892) in representing, perhaps (no, delete this craven
“perhaps”), the highest achievement of English poetry in a
hundred years, says somewhere (in a foreword?) exactly the
opposite: The bristling of thrilled little hairs obstructed his
barbering; but since both Alfreds certainly used an Ordinary
Razor, and John Shade an ancient Gillette, the discrepancy
may have been due to the use of different instruments.

Line 922: held up by Our Cream

This is not quite exact. In the advertisement to which it
refers, the whiskers are held up by a bubbly foam, not by a
creamy substance.

After this line, instead of lines 923-930, we find the follow-
ing, lightly deleted, variant:

v All artists have been born in what they call
a sorry age; mine is the worst of all:

Commentary 191

An age that thinks spacebombs and spaceships take
A genius with a foreign name to make.

When any jackass can rig up the stuff;

An age in which a pack of rogues can bluff

The selenographer; a comic age

That sees in Dr. Schweitzer a great sage.

Having struck this out, the poet tried another theme, but
these lines he also canceled:

England where poets flew the highest, now
Wants them to plod and Pegasus to plough;

Now the prosemongers of the Grubby Croup,

The Message Man, the owlish Nincompoop
And all the Social Novels of our age
Leave but a pinch of coal dust on the page.

line 929: Freud

Jn my mind's eye I see again the poet literally collapsing
on his lawn, beating the grass with his list, and shaking and
howling with laughter, and myself, Dr Kinbote, a torrent
of tears streaming down my beard, as I try to read coherently
certain tidbits from a book I had filched from a classroom:
a learned work on psychoanalysis, used in American colleges,
repeat, used in American coDeges. Alas, 1 find only two items
preserved in my notebook:

By pieking the nose in spite of all commands to the con-
trary, or when a youth is ail the time sticking bis finger
through his buttonhole ... the analytic teacher knows
that the appetite of the lustful one knows no limit in his
phantasies.

(Quoted by Prof. C. from Dr. Oskar Pfister, The
Psychoanalytical Method . 1917, N.Y., p. 79)

The little cap of red velvet in the German version of
Little Red Riding Hood is a symbol of menstruation.

(Quoted by Prof. C. from Erich Fromm, The
Forgotten Language , N.Y., p. 240.)

Do those clowns really believe what they teach?

192

PALE FIRE

Line 934: big trucks

I must say I do not remember hearing very often “big
trucks” passing in our vicinity. Loud cars, yes— -but not
trucks.

Line 937: Old Zembla

I am a weary and sad commentator today.

Parallel to the left-hand side of this card (his seventy-sixth)
the poet has written, on the eve of his death, a line (from
Pope’s Second Epistle of the Essay on Man ) that he may
have intended to cite in a footnote:

At Greenland , Zembla , or the Lord knows where

So this is all treacherous old Shade could say about Zembla
— my Zembla? While shaving his stubble off? Strange,
strange . . ,

Lines 939-940: Man’s life, etc

Jf I correctly understand the sense oi this succinct obser-
vation, our poet suggests heie that human htc is but a senes
of footnotes to a Vast obscure unfinished masterpiece

Line 949: And all the time

Thus, some tune m the morning of lulv 21, the last day of
his life, John Shade began his last batch of cards (seventy -
seven to eighty). Two silent time zones had now merged to
form the standard time of one man’s fate; and it is not im-
possible that the poet in New Wye and the thug m New York
awoke that morning at the same crushed beat of their Time-
keeper’s stopwatch.

Line 949: and all the time

And all the time he was coming nearer

A formidable thunderstorm had greeted Gradus in New
York on the night of his arrival from Paris (Monday, July
20). The tropical rainfall flooded basements and subway
tracks. Kaleidoscopic reflections played in the riverlike streets.
Vtnogradus had never seen such a display of lightning, neither
had Jacques d’Argus — or Jack Grey, for that matter (let us
not forget Jack Grey!). He put up in a third-class Broadway

Commentary 193

hotel and slept soundly, lying belly up on the bedclothes, in
striped pajamas — the kind that Zemblans call rusker sirsusker
(“Russian seersucker suit”) — and retaining as usual his socks:
not since July 11, when he had visited a Finnish bathhouse in
Switzerland, had he seen his bare feet.

It was now July 21. At eight in the morning New York
roused Gradus with a bang and a roar. As usual he started
his blurry daily existence by blowing his nose. Then he took
out of its nightbox of cardboard and inserted into his Comus-
mask mouth an exceptionally large and fierce-looking set of
teeth: the only bad flaw really in his otherwise harmless ap-
pearance, This done, he fished out of his briefcase two petit-
beurres he had saved and an even older but still quite palatable
small, sottish, near-ham sandwich, vaguely associated with the
train journey from Nice to Paris last Saturday night: not so
much thriltiness on his part (the Shadows had advanced him
a handsome sum, anyway), but an animal attachment to the
habits of his frugal youth. After breakfasting in bed on these
delicacies, he began preparations tor the most important day in
his life. He had shaved yesterday — that was out of the way.
His trusty pajamas he stuffed not into his traveling bag but
into the briefcase, dressed, unclipped from the inside of his
coat a cameo-pink, interdeiitally clogged pocket comb, drew
n through his bristly hair, carefully donned his trilby, washed
both hands with the nice, modern liquid soap in the nice,
modem, almost odorless lavatory across the corridor, mictu-
lared, rinsed one hand, and feeling clean and neat, went out
for a stroll

He had never visited Ntw York before; hut as many near-
cretins, he was above novellv. On the previous night he had
counted the mounting rows ot lighted windows in several sky-
scrapcrs, and now, after checking the height of a tew more
buildings, he felt that he knew all there was to know. He had a
brimming cup and halt a saucerful of coffee at a crowded and
wet counter and spent the rest ot the smoke-blue morning
moving from bench to bench and from paper to paper in the
westside alleys of Central Park.

He began with the day’s copy of The New York Times . His
lips moving like wrestling worms, he read about all kinds of
things. Hrushchov (whom they spelled “Khrushchev”) had
abruptly put off a visit to Scandinavia and was to visit Zetnbla
instead (here I tune in: ' Vi nazivaete sebya zemblerarm f you

194

PALE FIRE

call yourselves Zemblans, a ya vas nazivayu zemlyakami, and
I call you fellow countrymen!” Laughter and applause). The
United States was about to launch its first atom-driven mer-
chant ship (just to annoy the Ruskers, of course. J.G.). Last
night, in Newark, an apartment house at 5 55 South Street wa9
hit by a thunderbolt that smashed a TV set and injured two
people watching an actress lost in a violent studio storm (those
tormented spirits are terrible! C.X.K. teste J.S.). The Rachel
Jewelry Company in Brooklyn advertised in agate type for a
jewelry polisher who “must have experience on costume
jewelry” (oh, Degr6 had!). The Helman brothers said they
had assisted in the negotiations for the placement of a sizable
note: $11,000,000, Decker Glass Manufacturing Company,
Inc., note due July 1,” and Gradus, grown young again,
reread this twice, with the background gray thought, perhaps,
that he would be sixty-four four days after that (no comment) ,
On another bench he found a Monday issue of the same news-
paper. During a visit to a museum in Whitehorse (Gradus
kicked at a pigeon that came too near), the Queen of England
walked to a corner of the White Animals Room, removed her
right glove and, with her back turned to several evidently
observant people, rubbed her forehead and one of her eyes. A
pro-Red revolt had erupted in Iraq. Asked about the Soviet
exhibition at the New York Coliseum, Carl Sandburg, a poet,
replied, and I quote: “They make their appeal on the highest
of intellectual levels.” A hack reviewer of new books for
tourists, reviewing his own tour through Norway, said that
the fjords were too famous to need (his) description, and that
all Scandinavians loved flowers. And at a picnic for interna-
tional children a Zcmblan moppet cried to her Japanese
friend: Ufgut, ufgut, velkam ut Semblerland f (Adieu, adieu,
till we meet in Zembla!) I confess it has been a wonderful
game — this looking up in the WUL of various ephemerides
over the shadow of a padded shoulder.

Jacques d* Argus looked for a twentieth time at his watch.
He strolled like a pigeon with his hands behind him. He had
his mahogany shoes shined — and appreciated the way the dirty
but pretty boy clacked taut his rag. In a restaurant on Broad-
way he consumed a large portion of pinkish pork with sauer-
kraut, a double helping of elastic French fries, and the half of
an overripe melon. From my rented cloudlet l contemplate
1dm with quiet surprise: here be is, this creature ready to com-

Commentary 19S

mit a monstrous act — and coarsely enjoying a coarse meal! We
must assume, l think, that the forward projection of what
imagination he had, stopped at the act, on the brink of all its
possible consequences; ghost consequences, comparable to the
ghost toes of an amputee or to the fanning out of additional
squares which a chess knight (that skip-space piece), standing
on a marginal file, “feels” in phantom extensions beyond the
board, but which have no effect whatever on his real moves, on
the real play.

He strolled back and paid the equivalent of three thousand
Zemblan crowns lor his short but nice stay at Bcverland Ho-
tel. With the illusion of practical foiesight he transferred his
fiber suitcase and — after a moment of hesitation — his raincoat
to the anonymous security of a station locker — where, I sup-
pose, they are still lying as snug as my gemmed scepter, ruby
necklace, and diamond-studded crown in — no matter, where.
On his fateful journey he took only the battered black brief-
case wc know: it contained a clean nylon shirt, a dirty pajama,
a safety razor, a third petit-beurre, an empty cardboard box, a
thick illustrated paper he had not quite finished with in the
paik, a glass eye he once made foi his old mistress, and a
dozen syndicalist brochures, each in several copies, printed
with his own hands many years ago.

He had to check m at the airport at 2 pm The night be-
fore, when making his reservation, he had not been able to get
a seat on the earlier flight to New Wye because of some con-
vention there. He had fiddled with railway schedules, but these
had evidently been arranged by a piactical jcker since the only
available direct train (.dubbed the Square Wheel by our jolted
and jerked students) left at 5:13 a.m., dawdled at flag sta-
tions, and took eleven hours to cover the four hundred miles
to Exton; you could try to cheat it by going via Washington
but then you had to wait there at least three hours for a sleepy
local. Buses were out so far as Gradus was concerned since he
always got roadsick in them unless he drugged himself with
Fahrmamine pills, and that might affect his aim. Conte to think
of it, he was not feeling too steady anyway.

Gradus is now much nearer to us in space and time than
he was in the preceding cantos. He has short upright black
hair. We can fill in the bleak oblong of his face with most of
its elements such as thick eyebrows and a wart on the chin. He
has a ruddy but unhealthy complexion. We see, fairly in focus,

196

PALE FIRE

the structure of his somewhat mesmeric organs of vision. We
see his melancholy nose with its crooked ridge and grooved
tip. We see the mineral blue of his jaw and the gravelly
pointill6 of his suppressed mustache.

We know already some of his gestures, we know the chim-
panzee slouch of his broad body and short hindlegs. We have
heard enough about his creased suit. We can at last describe
his tie, an Easter gift from a dressy butcher, his brother-in-
law in Onhava: imitation silk, color chocolate brown, barred
with red, the end tucked into the shirt between the second and
third buttons, a Zemblan fashion of the nineteen thirties — and
a father-waistcoat substitute according to the learned. Repul-
sive black hairs coat the back of his honest rude hands, the
scrupulously clean bands of an ultra-unionized artisan, with a
perceptible deformation of both thumbs, typical of bobeche-
makers. We see, rather suddenly, his humid flesh. We can even
make out (as, head-on but quite safely, phantom-like, we pass
through him, through the shimmering propeller oi his flying
machine, through the delegates waving and grinning at us)
his magenta and mulberry insides, and the strange, not so good
sea swell undulating in his entrails.

We can now go further and describe, to a doctor or to any-
body else willing to listen to us, the condition of this primate’s
soul. He could read, write and reckon, he was endowed with
a modicum of self-awareness (with which he did not know
what to do) , some duration consciousness, and a good memory
for faces, names, dates and the like. Spiritually he did not
exist. Morally he was a dummy pursuing another dummy. The
fact that his weapon was a real one, and his quarry a highly
developed human being, this fact belonged to our woild of
events; in his, it had no meaning. I grant you that the idea of
destroying “the king” did hold for him some degree ot pleas-
ure, and therefore we should add to the list of his personal
parts the capacity of forming notions, mainly general notions,
as I have mentioned in another note which I will not bother to
look up. There might be (I am allowing a lot) a slight, very
slight, sensual satisfaction, not more I would say than what a
petty hedonist enjoys at the moment when, retaining his
breath, before a magnifying mirror, his thumbnails pressing
with deadly accuracy on both sides of a full stop, he expulses
totally the eely, semitransparent plug of a comedo— and ex-
hales an Ah of relief. Gradus would hot have killed anybody

Commentary 197

had he not derived pleasure not only from the imagined act
(insofar as he was capable of imagining a palpable future)
but also from having been given an important, responsible
assignment (which happened to require he should kill) by a
group of people sharing his notion of justice, but he would
not have taken the job if in killing he had not found some-
thing like that rather disgusting anticomedoist’s little thrill.

I have coasidered in my earlier note (I now see it is the note
to line 171) the particular dislikes, and hence the motives, of
our “automatic man,” as I phrased it at a time when he did
not have as much body, did not offend the senses as violently
as now; was, in a word, further removed from our sunny,
green, grass-fragrant Arcady. Bui Our Lord has fashioned
man so marvelously that no amount of motive hunting and
rational inquiry can ever really explain how and why any-
body is capable of destroying a fellow creature (this argument
necessitates, I know, a temporary granting to Gradus of the
status of man), unless he is defending the life ot his son, or
his own, or the achievement of a lifetime; so that in final
judgment of the Gradus versus the Crown case I would submit
tfrn if his human incompleteness be deemed insufficient to ex-
plain his idiotic journey across the Atlantic just to empty the
magazine of his gun, we may concede, doctor, that our half-
man was also half mad.

Aboard the small and uncomfortable plane flying into the
sun he found himself wedged among several belated delegates
to the New Wye Linguistic Conference, all of them lapel-
labeled, and lepresentmg the same foreign language, but none
being able to speak it, so that conversation was conducted
(across our hunched-up killer and on all sides of his im-
mobile face) in rather ordinary Anglo-American. During this
ordeal, poor Gradus kept wondering what caused another dis-
comfort which kept troubling him on and off throughout the
flight, and which was worse than the babble of the monolin-
guists. He could not settle what to attribute it to — pork, cab-
bage, fried potatoes or melon — for upon retasting them one
by one in spasmodic retrospect be found little to choose be-
tween their different but equally sickening flavors. My own
opinion, which I would like the doctor to confirm, is that the
French sandwich was engaged in an intestinal internecine war
with the “French” fries.

Upon arriving after five at the New Wyc airport he drank

19 $

PALE FIRE

two papercupfuls of nice cold milk from a dispenser and ac-
quired a map at the desk. With broad blunt finger tapping the
configuration of the campus that resembled a writhing stom-
ach, he asked the clerk what hotel was nearest to the univer-
sity, A car, he was told, would take him to the Campus Hotel
which was a few minutes 9 walk from the Main Hall (now
Shade Hall). During the ride he suddenly became aware of
such urgent qualms that he was forced to visit the washroom
as soon as he got to the solidly booked hotel. There his misery
resolved itself in a scalding torrent of indigestion. Hardly had
he refastened his trousers and checked the bulge of his hip
pocket than a renewal of stabs and queaks caused him to strip
his thighs again which be did with such awkward precipitation
that his small Browning was all but sent flying into the depths
of the toilet.

He was still groaning and grinding his dentures when he and
his briefcase re-offended the sun. It shone with all sorts ot
speckled effects through the trees, and College Town was gay
with summer students and visiting linguists, among whom
Gradus might have easily passed tor a salesman hawking
Basic-English primers for American schoolchildren or those
wonderful new translating machines that can do it so much
faster than a man or an animal.

A grave disappointment awaited him at Main Hail: it had
closed for the day. Three students lying on the grass suggested
he try the Library, and all three pointed to it across the lawn.
Thither trudged our thug.

“I don’t know where he lives,” said the girt at the desk. “But
I know he is here right now. You’ll find him, I’m sure, in North
West Three where we have the Icelandic Collection. You go
south [waving her pencil] and turn west, and then west again
where you see a sort of, a sort of [pencil making a ciitular
wiggle — round table? round bookshelf?] — No, wait a minute,
you better just keep going west till you hit the Florence Hough-
ton Room, and there you cross over to the north side of the
building. You cannot miss it” [returning pencil to ear].

Not being a mariner or a fugitive king, he promptly got lost
and after vainly progressing through a labyrinth of stacks,
asked about the Icelandic Collection of a stern-looking mother
librarian who was checking cards in a steel cabinet on a land-
ing, Her slow and detailed directions promptly led him back to
the main desk.

Commentary 199

“Please, I cannot find,” he said, slowly shaking his head.

“Didn’t you — ” the girl began, and suddenly pointed up:
“Oh, there he is!”

Along the open gallery that ran above the hall, parallel to
its short side, a tall bearded man was crossing over at a mili-
tary quick march from east to west. He vanished behind a
bookcase but not before Gradus had recognized the great
rugged frame, the erect carriage, the high-bridged nose, the
straight brow, and the energetic arm swing, of Charles Xavier
the Beloved.

Our pursuer made for the nearest stairs — and soon found
himself among the bewitched hush of Rare Books. The room
was beautiful and had no doors; in fact, some moments passed
before he could discover the draped entrance he himself had
just used. The awful perplexities of his quest blending with the
renewal of impossible pangs in his belly, he dashed back — ran
three steps down and nine steps up, and burst into a circular
room where a baldheaded suntanned professor in a Hawaiian
shirt sat at a round table reading with an ironic expression on
his face a Russian book. He paid no attention to Gradus who
traversed the room, stepped over a fat little white dog without
awakening it, clattered down a helical staircase and found him-
self in Vault P. Here, a well-lit, pipe-lined, white-washed pas-
sage led him to the sudden paradise of a water closet for
plumbers or lost scholars where, cursing, he hurriedly trans-
ferred his automatic from its precarious dangle-pouch to hi9
coat and relieved himself of another portion of the liquid hell
inside him. He started to climb up again, and noticed in the
temple light of the stacks an employee, a slim Hindu boy, with
a cal] card in his hand. I had never spoken to that lad but had
felt more than once his blue-brown gaze upon me, and no
doubt my academic pseudonym was familiar to him but some
sensitive cell in him, some chord of intuition, reacted to the
harshness of the killer’s interrogation and, as if protecting me
from a cloudy danger, he smiled and said: 'T do not know
him, sir.”

Gradus returned to the Main Desk.

“Too bad,” said the girl, “I just saw him leatfe.”

14 Bozhe moy , Bozhe moy,” muttered Gradus, who some*
times at moments of stress used Russian ejaculations.

“You’ll find him in the directory,” she said pushing it to-
wards him, and dismissing the sick man’s existence to attend

200 PALE FIRE

to the wants of Mr. Gerald Emerald who was taking out a fat
bestseller in a cellophane jacket.

Moaning and shifting from one foot to the other, Gradus
started leafing through the college directory but when he found
the address, he was faced with the problem of getting there.

“Dulwich Road,” be cried to the girl. “Near? Far? Very far,
probably?”

“Are you by any chance Prolessor Pnin’s new assistant?”
asked Emerald.

“No,” said the girl. “This man is looking for Dr. Kinbote, I
think. You aie looking for Dr. Kinbote, aren’t you?”

“Yes, and I can’t any more,” said Gradus.

“I thought so,” said the girl. “Doesn’t he live somewhere
near Mr. Shade, Gerry?”

“Oh, definitely,” said Gerry, and turned to the killer: “I
can drive you there if you like. It is on my way.”

Did they 'talk in the car, these two characters, the man in
green and the man in brown? Who can say 7 They did not.
After all, the drive took only a few minutes (it took me, at the
wheel of my powerful Kramler, tour and a half).

“I think I’ll drop you here,” said Mr. Fmerald “It’s that
house up there.”

One finds it hard to decide what Gradus alias Grey wanted
more at that minute: discharge his gun or iid himself of the
inexhaustible lava in his bowels As he began hurriedly
fumbling at the car door, unfastidious Emerald leaned, close to
him, across him, almost merging with him, to help him open
it — and then, slamming it shut again, whiz/ed on to some tryst
in the valley. My reader will, 1 hope, appreciate all the minute
particulars I have taken such trouble to present to him after
a long talk I had with the killer; he will appreciate them even
more if 1 tell him that, according to the legend spread later by
the police. Jack Grey had been given a lift, all the way from
Roanoke, or somewhere, by a lonesome trucker! One can only
hope that an impartial search will turn up the triby forgotten
in the Library — or in Mr. Emerald’s car.

Line 957: Night Rote

I remember one little poem from Night Rote (meaning
“the nocturnal sound of the sea”) that happened to be my first
contact with the American poet Shade. A young lecturer on
American Literature, a brilliant and charming boy from Bos-

Commentary 201

ton, showed me that slim and lovely volume in Onhava, in
my student days. The following lines opening this poem, which
is entitled “Art,** pleased me by their catchy lilt and jarred
upon the religious sentiments instilled in me by our very
“high** Zemblan church.

From mammoth hunts and Odysseys
And Oriental charms
To the Italian goddesses
With Flemish babes in arms.

Lint 962: Help me, Will. Pale Fire.

Paraphrased, this evidently means: Let me look in Shake-
speare for something I might use for a title. And the find is
“pale fire.” But in which of the Bard's works did our poet cull
it? My readers must make their own research. All I have with
me is a tiny vest pocket edition of Timon of Athens — in Zem-
blan! It certainly contains nothing that could be regarded as
an equivalent of “pale fire" (if it had, my luck would have
been a statistical monster).

English was not taught m Zembla before Mr. Campbell’s
time. Conmal mastered it all by himself (mainly by learning a
lexicon by heart ) as a young man, around 1880, when not the
verbal mferno but a quiet military career seemed to open be-
fore him, and his first work (the translation of Shakespeare’s
Sonnets ) was the outcome of a bet with a fellow officer. He
exchanged his frogged uniform for a scholar’s dressing gown
and tackled The Tempest. A slow worker, he needed half a
century lo translate the works of him whom he called “dze
Bart,” in their entirety. After this, he went on to
Milton and other poets, steadily drilling through the ages, and
had just completed Kipling’s “The Rhyme of the Three
Sealers’* (“Now this is the Law of the Muscovite that he
proves with shot and steel”) when he fell ill and soon expired
under his splendid painted bed ceil with its reproductions of
Altamira animals, his last words in bis last delirium being
“ Comment dit-on * mourir en anglais ?” — a beautiful and
touching end.

It is easy to sneer at Conmal’s faults. They are the naive
failings of a great pioneer. He lived too much in his library,
too little among boys and youths. Writers should see the world,
pluck its figs and peaches, and not keep constantly meditating

202

PALE FIRE

in a tower of yellow ivory — which was also John Shade’s
mistake, in a way.

We should not forget that when Conmal began his stupen-
dous task no English author was available in Zcmblan except
Jane de Faun, a lady novelist in ten volumes whose works,
strangely enough, are unknown in England, and some frag-
ments of Byron translated from French versions.

A large, sluggish man with no passions save poetry, he
seldom moved from his warm castle and its fifty thousand
crested books, and had been known to spend two years in bed
reading and writing after which, much refreshed, he went for
the first and only time to London, but the weather was foggy,
and he could not understand the language, and so went back to
bed for another year.

English being Cornual's prerogative, his Shakspere remained
invulnerable throughout the greater part of his long life. The
venerable Duke was famed for the nobility of his work; few
dared question its fidelity. Personally, I had never the heart to
check it. One callous Academician who did, lost his seat in
result and was severely reprimanded by Conmal m an ex-
traordinary sonnet composed directly in colorful, jf not quite
correct, English, beginning:

I am not slave! Let be my critic slave.

I cannot be. And Shakespeare would not want thus.

Let drawing students copy the acanthus,

1 work with Master on the architrave!

Line 991: horseshoes

Neither Shade nor 1 had ever been able to ascertain whence
precisely those ringing sounds came — which of the five fam-
ilies dwelling across the road on the lower slopes of our
woody hill played horseshoe quoits every other evening; but
the tantalizing tingles and jingles contributed a pleasant
melancholy note to the rest of Dulwich Hill's evening sonori-
ties — children calling to each other, children being called
home, and the ecstatic barking of the boxer dog whom most
of the neighbors disliked (he overturned garbage cans) greet-
ing his master home.

It was this medley of metallic melodies which surrounded
me on that fateful, much too luminous evening of July 21
when upon roaring home from the library in my powerful car

Commentary 203

I at once went to see what my dear neighbor was doing. I had
just met Sybil speeding townward and therefore nursed some
hopes for the evening. I grant you 1 very much resembled a
lean wary lover taking advantage of a young husband’s being
alone in the house!

Through the trees 1 distinguished John’s white shirt and
gray hair: he sat in his Nest (as he called it), the arborlike
porch or veranda I have mentioned in my note to lines 47-48.
I could not keep from advancing a little nearer — oh, discreetly,
almost on tiptoe; but then I noticed he was resting rather than
writing, and I openly walked up to his porch or perch. His
elbow was on the table, his fist supported his temple, his
wrinkles were all awiy, his eyes moist and misty; he looked
like an old tipsy witch. He lifted his free hand in greeting with-
out changing his attitude, which although not unfamiliar to
me struck me this time as more forlorn than pensive.

“Well,” I said, “has the muse been kind to you?”

“Very kind,” he replied, slightly bowing his hand-propped
head: “Fxceptionally kind and gentle. In fact, I have here
[indicating a huge pregnant envelope near him on the oilcloth]
practically the entire pioduct. A few trifles to settle and [sud-
denly striking the table with his fistj I’ve swung it, by God.”

The envelope, unfastened at one end, bulged with stacked
card?.

“Where is the missus?” 1 asked (mouth dry).

“Help me, Charlie, to get out of here,” he pleaded. “Foot
gone to sleep. Sybil is at a dinner meeting of her club.”

“A suggestion,” I said, quivering. “I have at my place half a
gallon of Tokay. I’m ready to share my favorite wine with my
favorite poet. We shall have for dinner a knackle ol walnuts, a
couple of large tomatoes, and a bunch of bananas. And if you
agree to show me your ‘finished product,’ there will be another
treat: I promise to divulge to you why 1 gave you, or rather
who gave you, your theme.”

“What theme?” said Shade absently, as he leaned on my
arm and gradually recovered the use of his numb limb.

“Our blue incnubilable Zembla, and the red-capped Stein-
mann, and the motorboat in the sea cave, and — ”

“Ah,” said Shade, “1 think I guessed ydtir secret quite some
time ago. But all the same I shall sample your wine with
pleasure. Okay, I can manage by myself now.”

Well did 1 know he could never resist a golden drop of this

204

PAL E FIRE

or that, especially since he was severely rationed at home. With
an inward leap of exultation I relieved him of the large en-
velope that hampered his movements as he descended the steps
of the porch, sideways, like a hesitating infant. We crossed the
lawn, we crossed the road. Clink-clank, came the horseshoe
music from Mystery Lodge. In the large envelope I carried 1
could feel the hard cornered, rubberbanded batches of index
cards. We are absurdly accustomed to the miracle of a few
written signs being able to contain immortal imagery, involu-
tions of thought, new worlds with live people, speaking, weep-
ing, laughing. We take it for granted so simply that in a sense,
by the very act of brutish routine acceptance, we undo the
work of the ages, the history of the gradual elaboration of
poetical description and const nicti on, from the treeman to
Browning, from the caveman to Keats. What it we awake one
dav, all of us, and find ourselves utterly unable to read? I wish
you to gasp not only ai what you read bm at the muacle of its
being readable (so I used to tell my studinii). Although I am
capable, through long dabbling m blue magic of unirating anv
prose in rhe world (but singularly enough not \crse~ 1 am a
miserable- rhymester), 1 do not consider m\ sell a tiue ittist,
save in one matter: I can do what onl) a true artist can do —
pounce upon the forgotten butteifly of revelation wtur» my-
self abruptly from the habit of things, see the web of the
world, and the warp and the weft of that web. vSolemnly I
weighed in my hand what 1 was Cariymg under my left arm-
pit, and for a moment I found myselt emichcd with an in-
describable amazement as if informed that fire fltes were
making necodable signals on behalf oi stranded spirits, or that
a bat was writing a legible tale of lortuie in the bruised and
branded skv

I was holding all Zembla pressed to mv heart.

Lines 993-905. A dark Vanessa, etc.

One minute before his death, as we were crossing from his
demesne to mine and had begun working up between the
junipers and ornamental shrubs, a Red Adnmable (see note to
line 270) came du/dy whirling around us like a colored flame.
Once or twice before we had already noticed the same indi-
vidual, at that same time, on that same spot, where the low
sun finding an aperture in the foliage splashed the brown sand

Commentary 205

with a last radiance while the evening’s shade covered the rest
o f the path. One’s e>es could not follow the rapid butterfly in
the sunbeams as it flashed and vanished, and flashed again,
with an almost frightening imitation of conscious play which
now culminated in its settling upon my delighted friend’s
sleeve. It took off, and we saw it next moment, sporting in an
ecstasy of frivolous haste around a laurel shrub, every now
and then perching on a lacquered leaf and sliding down its
grooved middle like a bov down the banisters on his birthday.
Then the tide of the shade reached the laurels, and the mag-
nificent, velvet-and-flame creature dissolved in it.

Line 998: Some neighbor’s gardener

Some neighbor’s! The poet had seen mv gardener many
time 1 !, and this vagueness 1 can only assign to his desire (no-
ticeable elsewhere in his handling of names, etc.) to give a
certain por tic *1 patina, the bloom of remoteness, to tamiliar
figures and things — although ir is just possible he might have
mistaken him in the broken lighc for a stranger working for a
stranger This gifted gaidener J discovered by chance one idle
spring dav when 1 was slowly wending mv way home after a
m lddening and embarrassing experience at the college indoor
swimming pool. He stood at the top of a green ladder at-
tending to the sick branch of a grateful tree in one of the most
famous avenues m Appal ichia. His red flannel shirt lav on the
grass We conversed, a little shyly, he above. 1 below. 1 was
pleasantly surprised at his being able to refer all his patients
to their proper habitats. It was spring and we were alone in
that admirable colonnade of trees which visitors from England
have photographed from end to end. f can enumerate here
only a few kinds of those trees: Jove’s stout oak and two
others: the thundercloud from Britain, the Inotty-cntrailed
from a Mediterranean island, a weather-fending line (now
lime), a phoenix (now date palm), a pine and a cedar
( Cedrus ), all insular; a Venetian sycamore tree (Jeer); two
willows, the green, likewise from Venice, the hoar-leaved from
Denmark; a midsummer elm, its barky fingers enraged with
ivy; a midsummer mulberry* its shade inviting to tarry; and a
clown’s sad cypress from Illyria.

He had worked for two years as a male nurse in a hospital
for Negroes in Maryland. He was hard up. He wanted to study

206

PAIL F1RF

landscaping, botany and l rench ( ‘to read m the original
Baudelaire and Dumu^’) 1 promised him some financial as-
sistance He started to woik at my place the very next day He
was awfully nice and pathetic, and all that, but a little too talk-
ative and completely impotent which I found discouraging
Otherwise he was a strong strapping fellow, and I hugely en-
joyed the aesthetic pleasure of watchuig him buoyantly strug-
gle with eanh and turi or delicately manipulate bulbs, or lay
out the flagged path which * ‘ay or may not be a nice surprise
for my landlord, when he >afely returns trom Emgland (where
I hope no bloodthirsty mauiacs aie stalking him*) How 1
longed to hive him (my gaid«.ner, not my landlord) wear a
great bia tuiban, and shalw irs, and an aiiki** bucelet 1 would
cert uni y lmc him attuod lccordmg to the ok romanticist
notion of a Moorish pi mee, had 1 Kpu a northern king — or
rather had t still been a kme, (exile H conus a bad habit) You
will chide me, my modest man, foi writing so much about you
m this note, but I feel 1 must pcc\ yen th tribute After all
you saved m\ Jifv 'iou and 1 were the last peopi- wfo s>w
John bhade alne, \ou admitted uittrwaidv to a strange
premonition which m. d„ sou mUtrupt yoiu woik a* you
noticed us tiom ibe sninbbeiy wilkin^ towoid the poirb
where stood— (Supeistitiously 1 c nmol write on the odd dark
wotd you employed )

Line 1000 f F me 7 T w s the shad* w ol the \va\wmc, <drmi]

Tluough the huk ol John’s thm ictton *hiri oik *ouM dis
tmguish pitches of pink, wheie it stuck to the skin ibove and
around the outline oi the lunny little garment h* wor*. undei
the shirr all pood Au.eru m c do 1 sec with such awful
clarity one fat shoulder idling, tfw other using his gray mop
of hair, fus ceased nape, the red bandmna handkeichief
limply hanging out of om hip pocket, the wallet bulge ol the
othci, the broid deformed pelvis, the grass stains on the seat
of his old khaki pants, the scoffed bstk seams of his loafers,
and I heai ins delightful growl as he looks hack at me, without
slopping, to smy something like *Be suie not to spill any-
thing— this is not a paper chase,” or fwincmg] ‘I’ll have to
wine again to Bob Wells [the town mayor] about those damned
Tuesday night trucks *

We had reached the Golds worth side of the lane, and the

Commentary 207

flagged walk that scrambled along a side lawn to connect with
the gravel path leading up from Dulwich road to the Golds-
worth front door, when Shade remarked: “You have a caller.”

In profile to us in the porch a short thickset, dark-haired
man in a brown suit stood holding by its ridiculous strap a
shabby and shapeless briefcase, his curved forefinger still
directed toward die bell button he had just pressed.

“I will kill him,” I muttered. Recently a bonneted girl had
made me accept a bunch of religious tracts and had told me
that her brother, whom for some reason I had pictured to my-
self as a fragile neurotic youth, would drop in to discuss with
me God’s Purpose, and explain anything I had not under-
stood in the tracts. Youth, indeed!

“Oh, I will kill him,” 1 repeated under my breath — so in-
tolerable was it to think th it xhe rapture of the poem might be
delayed. In my fury and hurry to dismiss the intruder, I out-
stripped John who until then had been in front of me, heading
at a good shamble for the double treat of revel and revelatidh.

Hod Jf e\en seen Gradus before/ Let me think. Had I?
Memory shakes her head. Nevertheless the killer affirmed to
me later that once from my tower, overlooking the Palace
orchard, I had waved to him as be and one of my former
pages, a boy with hair like excelsior, were carrying cradled
glass from the hothouse to a horse-drawn van; but, as the
caller now veeied toward us and transfixed us with his snake-
sad, close-set eyes, I felt such a tremor of recognition that had
l been in bed dreaming I would have awoken with a groan.

His fiist bullet ripped a sleeve button off my black blazer,
another sang past my ear. it is evil piffle to assert that he aimed
not at me (whom he had just seen in the library — let us be
consistent, gentlemen, ours is a rational world after all), but
at the gray-locked gentleman behind me. Oh, he was aiming
at me all right but missing me every time, the incorrigible
bungler, as I instinctively backed, bellowing and spreading my
great strong arms (with my left hand still holding the poem,
“still clutching the inviolable shade,” to quote Matthew Ar-
nold, 1822-1888), in an effort to halt the advancing madman
and shield John, whom I feared he might, quite accidentally,
hit, while he, my sweet awkward old Joint, kept clawing at
me and pulling me after him, back to the protection of his
laurels, with the solemn fussiness of a poor lame boy trying to

208

PALE FIRE

get his spastic brother out of the range of the stones hurled at
them by schoolchildren, once a familiar sight in all countries
I felt — I still feel — Tohn’s hand fumbling at mine, seeking my
fingertips, finding them, onlv to abandon them at once as if
passing to me, in a sublime relay race, the baton of life.

One of the bullets that spared me struck him in the side and
went through his heart. His presence behind me abruptly
failing me caused me to lose my balance, and, simultaneously,
to complete the farce of fat' my gai dener’s spade dealt gun-
man Jack from behind the hedge a tiemendous blow on the
pate, felling him and sending lus weapon flying from his
grasp. Our savior retrieved it and helped me to my feet. My
coccyx and right wrist hurt badly but the poem was safe.
John, though, lay proue on the ground, with a rec* spot on his
white shirt. I still hoped he had not been killed line madman
sat on the poich step, da/edlv musing with bloody hands a
bleeding head J eaving the gardener to watch over him I hur-
ried into the house and concealed the invaluable envelope
under a heap of girls’ galoshes furted snowboots <*nd white
wellingtons heaped at the bottom of a closet, ftoiu which I
exited as if it had been the end of the secret passage that had
taken me all the way out of my enchanted castle and right
from Zembla to this Arcady. f then dialed 11111 and returned
with a glass of water to the scene of the carnage. r J he poor
poet had now been turmd over and lav with open dead eyes
directed up at the sunm cvemng acurc rhe armed gardener
and the battered killer v ere smoking side bj side on the steps.
The litter, either because he was in ptin, or because he had
decided to play a new role, ignored me as completely *s if 1
were a stone king on a stone charger ru the Tesseia Square ot
Ouhava, but the poem w & sale.

The gardener took the glass ot water I had placed near a
flowerpot bes»de the poich steps and shaied it with the killer,
and then accompanied him to the basement toilet, and pres-
ently the police and the ambulance arrived, and the gunman
gave his name as Jack Grey, no fixed abode, except the Insti-
tute for the Criminal Insane, in, good dog, which of course
should have been his permanent address all along, and which
the police thought he had just escaped from.

“Come along, Jack, we’lJ put something on that head of
yours/* said a calm but purposeful cop stepping over the body,

Commentary 209

and then there was the awful moment when Dr. Sutton’s
daughter drove up with Sybil Shade.

In the course of that chaotic night I found a moment to
transfer the poem from under the booties of Golds worth’s four
nymphels to the austere security of my black valise, but only
at daybreak did I find it safe enough to examine my treasure.

We know how firmly, how stupidly 1 believed that Shade
was composing a poem, a kind of romaunt, about the King
of Zembia. We have been prepared for the horrible disap-
pointment in store for me. Oh, I did not expect him to devote
himself completely to that theme! Il might have been blended
of course with suine of his own life stuff and sundry Ameri-
cana — but I was sure his poem would contain the wonderful
incidents I had described to him, the characters I had made
alive for him and all the unique atmosphere of my kingdom. I
even suggested to him a good title — the title of the book in me
whose pages he was to cut: Solus Rex; instead of which I saw
Vale Firt> which meant to me nothing I started to read the
poem, I read faster and faster. 1 sped thiough it, snariing, as a
furious young heir through an old deceiver’s testament. Where
were The battlements of my sunset castle? Where was Zembia
the Fair? Where her spine of mountain*? Where her long
thrill through the mist? And my lovely flower hoys, and the
spectrum or the stained windows, and the Black Rose Paladins,
and the whole marvelous tale? Nothing of il was there! The
complex contribution i had been pressing upon him with a
hypnotist's patience and a lover’s urge was simply cot there. Oh,
but i cannot express the agony! Instead of the wild glorious
romance — what did 1 have? An autobiogiaphical, eminently
Appalachian, rather old-fashioned nan alive in a neo-Popian
prosodic style — beautifully written of course — Shade could
noi write otherwise than bcauntully— but void of my magic,
of that special rich streak of magical madness which I was
sure would run through it and make it transcend its time.

Gradually l regained my usual composuie. 1 reread Pale
Fire more carefully. I liked it better when expecting less. Aud
what was that? What was that dim distant music, those vestiges
of color in the air? Here and there I discovered in it and espe-
cially, especially in the invaluable variants, echoes and spangles
of iny mind, a long ripplewake ot my glory. I now felt a new,
pitiful tenderness toward the poem as one has for a fickle

210

P A 1 E EIRE

young creature who has been stolen and brutally enjoyed by a
black giant but now again is safe in our hall and park,
whistling with the stableboys, swimming with the tame seal.
The spot still hurts, it must hurt, but with strange gratitude we
kiss those heavy wet eyelids and caress that polluted flesh.

My commentary to this poem, now in the hands of my
readers, represents an attempt to sort out those echoes and
wavelets of fire, and pale phosphorescent hints, and all the
many subliminal debts to me. Some of my notes may sound
bitter — but I have done my best not to air any grievances. And
in this final scholium my intention is not to complain of the
vulgar and cruel nonsense that professional reporters and
Shade’s “friends” in the obituaries they concocted allowed
themselves to spout when misdescribing the circumstances of
Shade’s death. I regard their references to me as a mixture ot
journalistic callousness and the venom of vipers. I do not
doubt that many of the statements made m this work wiU be
brushed aside hy the guilty parties when it is out. Mrs Shade
will not remember having been shown by her husband who
“showed her everything” one or two of the precious variants.
The three students lying on the grass will turn out to be totally
amnesic. The desk girl at the l ibrary will not recall (will have
been told not to recall) anybody asking for Dr. Kmbote on
the day of the murder. And I am sure that Mr. Emerald will
interrupt briefly his investigation ot some inanimate student’s
resilient charms to deny with the vigor of roused virility that
he ever gave anybody a bit to my house- that evening In other
words, everything will be done to cut off my person com-
pletely from my dear friend's fate.

Nevertheless, I have had my little revenge: public misap-
prehension indirectly helped me to obtain the right of pub-
lishing Pale Fire . My good gardener, when enthusiastically re-
lating to everybody what he had seen, certainly erred in several
respects — not so much perhaps in his exaggerated account of
my “heroism” as in the assumption that Shade had been de-
liberately aimed at by the so-called Jack Grey; but Shade’s
widow found herself so deeply affected by the idea of my
having “thrown myseli” between the gunman and his target
that during a scene I shall never forget, she cried out, stroking
my hands: “There are things for which no recompense in this
world or another is great enough.” That “other world” comes

Commentary 211

in handy when misfortune bcfalK the infidel but I let it pass of
course, and, indeed, resolved not to refute anything, saying
instead: “Oh, but there is a recompense, my dear S)bil. It may
seem to you a very modest request but — give me the permis-
sion, Sybil, to edit and publish John's last poem.” The permis-
sion was given at once, with new cries and new hugs, and
already next dav her signature was under the agreement I had
a quick little lawyer draw up. That moment of grateful grief
you soon forgot, dear girl. But J assure you that I do not mean
any harm, and that John Shade, perhaps, will not be too much
annoyed by my notes, despite the intrigues and the dirt.

Because of these machinations 1 was confronted with night-
mare problems m m\ endeavors tv make peopje calmly see —
without having them immediate!) scream and hustle me — the
truth vt the tragedy— a *ugedy in vhich I had been not a
“chance witness” but the protagonist, and the main, if only
potential, victim The hullabaloo ended by affecting the course
of rnv new life, and necessitated m\ removal to this modest
mountain cabin; but 1 did manage to obtain, soon after his de-
tention, an tmerMcw, perhaps even i wo interviews, with the
prisoner. He was now much more tuud them when he cowered
biding on inv porch step, arm he told me all I wanted to
know, by making him behevc I could help him at his trial I
forced him to lo ntess his hernous crime — his deceiving the
police and the nation by posmg as Tack Grey, escapee from an
asylum, who mistook Shade for the man who sent him there.
A few davs later, alas, he thwarted justice by slitting his throat
with a tutfety razor Made salvaged from an unwatched garbage
container He died, nor so much because h iving played his
part in the story be saw no pomf in existing any longer, but be-
cause he could not live down this last crowning botch — killing
the wrong peison when the right one stood before him in
other words, his life ended not in a feeble splutter of the clock-
work but m a gesture of humanoid despair. Enough of this.
Exit Jack Grey.

I cannot recall without a shudder the lugubrious week that
1 spent in New Wje before leaving it, I hope, forev.r. I lived
in constant fear that robbers would deprive me of my tender
treasure. vSome of mj readers may laugh when they learn that
I fussily removed it from my black valise to an empty steel
box in my landlord’s study, and a few hours later took the

212

PALE FIRE

manuscript out again, and tor several days wore it, as it were,
having distributed the ninety-two index cards about my person,
twenty in the right-hand pocket of my coat, as many in the
left-hand one, a batch of forty against my right nipple and the
twelve precious ones with variants in my innermost left-breast
pocket. I blessed my royal stars for having taught myself wife
work, for I now sewed up all four pockets. Thus with cautious
steps, among deceived enemies, I circulated, plated with
poetry, armored with rhyme*, stout with another man’s song,
stiff with cardboard, bullet-proof at long last.

Many years ago — how man/ I would not care to say — I re-
member my 7emblan nurse telling me, a little man of six in
the throes of adult insomnia: “ Mimiamm , Gut mag alkart,
Pern dirstan ” (my darling, God makes hungry, the Devil
thirsty). Well, folks, 1 guess many in this fine hall are as
hungry and thirsty as me, and I’d better stop, folks, nght here
Yes, better stop. My notes and self are petenng out. Gentle-
men, 1 have suffered verv rouen, and more than any of you
can imagine, 1 pray for the Lord's benediction to rest on my
wretched countrymen My work is finished My poet i* dead
“And you, what will you be dome with yourself, poor &>ng,
poor Kiribote?” a gentle young voice nuv impure
God will help me, I tru>t, to nd myself of any desire to
follow the example of two other dnra^tus in flu* work I
shall continue to \ may assume otner dogu^cs other
forms, but I shall try to exist. I may tu r n up yet, on another
campus, as an old, happy, healthy, heterosexual Russian, a
writer in exile, sans fame, sans future, sans audience, sans any-
thing but his art 1 may join forces with Odon ir a new motion
picture: Escape from Zembla (ball in the palace, bomb m the
palace square). ] may pander to the simple tastes of theatrical
critics and cook up a stage play, an old-tashioned melodrama
with three principles: a lunatic who intends to kill an imag-
inary king, another lunatic who imagines himself to be that
king, and a distinguished old poet who stumbles by chance
into the line of fire, and perisheo m the clash between the two
figments. Oh, 1 may do many things! History permitting, I
may sail back to my recovered kingdom, and with a great sob
greet the gray coastline and the gleam of a roof m the ram. 1
may huddle and groan in a madhouse. But whatever happens,
wherever the scene is laid, somebody, somewhere, will quietly

Commentary 213

set out — somebody has already set out, somebody still rather
far away is buying a ticket, is boarding a bus, a ship, a plane,
has landed, is walking toward a million photographers, and
presently he will ring at my door — a bigger, more respectable,
more competent Oradus,

INDEX

The italicized numerals refer to the lines in the poem and
the comments thereon. The capital letters (7, K , S ( which
see) stand for the three main characters in this work.

A Karon, Os win Affcnpin, last Baron ot All, a puny traitor,
286 .

Ac hi , Iris, celebrated actress, d 1888, a passionate and power-
ful woman, favorite of Thurgus the Third ) 30. She

died officially by her own hand; unofficially, strangled In
her dicssing room by a fellow actor, a jealous young Goth-
, lander, now, at ninety, the oldest, and least important, mefh-
bers of the Shadows ( p.v . ) group.

A If in, Kinp, surnamed The Va<»ue, 1873-1918, reigned from
1900; K.’s father: a kind, gentle, absent-minded monarch,
mainly interested in automobiles, flying michines, motor-
boats and, ,d one time, sea shells, killed in an airplane ac-
cident, 71.

Andronnikov and Nia%arin, two Soviet experts in quest of a
buried treasure, 130 . 681 1 741; see Crown Jewels.

Arnot, Romulus , poet about town and Zemblan patriot,

fcis poem quoted, 80; executed by the Extremists.

✓!/*<«, a line town in E. Zembla, capital of Connul’s dukedom;
once the mayorship of the worthy Fcrz (“chess queen”)
Bretwit, a cousin ot the granduncle of Oswin Bietwit (tf/iO,
I4Q, 286 .

B., Baron, involuntary lather- in-law or Baron A. and imag-
inary old friend ol the Bretwit (q.v.) family, 286 .

Bern* a mountain range dividing the peninsula lengthwise; de-
scribed with some of its glittering peaks, mysterious passes
and picturesque slopes, 140.

Blawick, Blue Cove, a pleasant seaside resort on the Western
Coast of Zembla, casino, golf course, sea food, boats for
hire, 149.

Blenda , Queen , the King’s mother, i

215

216

PALE FIRE

Bovcobel , site of the Royal Summerhouse, a beautiful, piny
and duny spot m W. Zembla, solt hollows imbued with the
writer’s most amorous recollections; now a “nudist
colony” — whatever that is, 149. 596.

Botkin, V., Ametican scholar of Russian descent, 894; king-
bot, maggot of extinct fly that once bred in mammoths and
is thought to have hastened their phylogenetic end, 247,
bottekin -maker, 71; bot plop, and botetiy, big-bellied
(Russ ); botkm or bodkin, a Danish stiletto.

Breqben* See Jftera

Bretwit, Oswin, diplomat and Zembtan patriot,

286 . See also under Odevalla and Aros

Campbell , Walter , b. 1890, in Glasgow; K *s tutor,

an amiable gentleman with a mellow and rich mind; dead
shot and champion skater; now in Tian; 130.

Charles II, Charles Xavier Vseslav, list King of Zembla, sur-
named The Beloved, b. 1915, reigned his crest,

I; his studies and his reign. 12, fearful fate ot predecessors,
62, his suppoileis ~0; parent,, 7', bedroom, 80, escape
from palace. 130, and across the mountains, ]*<*• ernnge-
mcot to Disa rec.UJcd, 27 *; pareafhtucal passage through
Paris, 28o; and through Swireilano, 408: visit to Villa IVsa,
413 night m mountains recalled, 59 r 6'C; hn Russian
blood, and Ciotfn Jewess (*?v. b> all means), o8I f hr* ar-
rival in the US.A, 69 j; letter to Disa stolen, and
quoted, 7to8; his portiait discussed, S9^ t his presence in
library, 949 identity almost rove dec, W'; Sotos Rex, 1000.
See also K inbote.

Conmal, Duke of Aros, K \ uncle, the eldest half-

brother of Queen Rlenda (nv.), noble paiaphrast, 12; his
version of Tim on of Athens, 39, 130; his life and work,
962 .

Crown Jewels, 130 . 681; sue Hiding Place

Disa, Duchess of Pavn, ol Great Pa>n and Mone, my lovely,
pale, melancholy Queen, haunting my dreams, and haunted
by dreams of me, b. her album and favorite trees. ^9;
married her lettcis on etheieal paper with a water-
mark I cannot make out, her image \ortunng me in my
sleep, 433.

Embla , a small old town with a wooden church surrounded by
sphagnum bogs at the saddest, loneliest, northmost point of
the misty peninsula, 149 , 433.

Index

217

Emblem , meaning “blooming* in Zemblan; a beautiful bay
with bluish and bLck, curiously striped rocks and a luxuri-
ous growth of heather on its gentle slopes, in the southmost
part of W. Zembla, 433.

Falkhctg, a pink cone, 71 , snowhooded, 149.

Flatman, Thomas, i 637-88, Fnplish poet, scholar and minia-
turist, not known to old fraud 894.

Fleur , Counters de fyler, an elegant 1 ad v- in waiting, 77, 80 ,
433 .

G, see Gradus.

Garh, a farmer's daughter, 14 433. Also a rosy-cheeked
goo^« -boy round in a country hie, north of Troth,
only now distinctly lecalleJ by the writer

GlitiernUn , A7f a splendid mount. an m the Bern Range
Oy.i ); pity 1 lUaV never limb u o u a, 7‘/9.

Gordon, &ec Kruminholz

Grad us, Jakob, -dins Jack Degree, de Grey,
d’ Argus, VinogrtdiK Leoingra Ju* , e*c • i* Jack of small
trades ana a killer, 72 //; hnduug the viiong people, #<J;
h*s ^ppioach sviiebioruzcd vntb b\ woik on tl c poem, 120,
1 It; his election and past tabulations. 171; the m*i lap of
his mmney Onhava to Copenhagen W. 209, to Paris, and
meeting w»th O/vn Bmwit, 286; to Geneva, md talk with
little Gordon a 4 Joe I : vender s phuc near Lex, 408 , cnllmg
headquarters Jrom Geneva, 469; fus name in a variant, and
lus wan in Geneva, to Nice, a -id his wait thero, 697;
his moving with Izumrudov in Vec aud discover' ot the
King’s address, 7 '*7, from IMriv fo New York. 873, m New
York, his morning in New York, Ins join rev to New’
Wye, to the campus, to Dulwich Rd., the crowning
blunder, 1**00.

Griff, old mountain fanner and Zemblan pc not, 119.

Gtindelwod , a fine town in B Zeuibla, ?/ 1^9.

Hiding place, potaynik (</.v.)

Hodinski, Russian adventurer, d. 1800, also known as Hodyua,
681, resided in Zembla 1778-1800: authoi o\ a veubrated
pastiche and lover of Princess (later Queen) Ya-ug* W- v *)*
mother of Igor II, grandmothei of Ihuigui (q.v )

Igor 11, reigned 1 800-1 84S # a wise and benes^nf king, son
oi Quetn Yaruga {q.v .) and father of Thurgus 111 (g.v,);
a very private section of the picture gallery in the Palace,
accessible only to the reigning monarch, but easily broken

218

PALE FIRE

into through Bower P by an inquisitive pubescent, con-
tained the statues of Igor’s four hundred favorite catamites,
in pink marble, with inset glass eyes and various touched
up details, an outstanding exhibition of verisimilitude and
bad art, later presented by K. to an Asiatic potentate.

K, see Charles JI and Kinbote.

Kalixhaven, a colorful seaport on the western coast, a few
miles north of Blawick 171; many pleasant memo-

ries.

Kinbote , Charles , Dr., an intimate friend of 5, his literary
adviser, editor and commentator; first meeting and friend-
ship with S, Foreword; his interest m Appalachian birds,
1; his goodnatured request to have S use his stories, 12;
his modesty, 34; his having no library in his Timonian cave,
39; his belief in his having inspired S , 42; his house in
Dulwich Road, and the windows of S' s house, 47; Prof. H.
contradicted and corrected, 61 , 71; his anxieties and in-
somnias, 62; the map he made lor »V 71 his sense of humor,
79, 91; his belief that the term “iridule" is Vs invention,
109; his weariness, 120; his ^poits activities, 130; his visit
to S' s basement, 143; his trusting the leader enjoyed the
note, 149; boyhood and the Orient impress recalled, *62;
his request that the reader consult a later note, 169; his
quiet warning to G , 171; his remarks on critics and other
sallies endorsed by S, 172; his participation in certain fes-
tivities elsewhere, his being debarred from S’s birthday
party upon coming home, and his sly trick next morning,
181; his hearing about Hazel's “poltergeist’' phase, 230;
poor who? 231 ; his futile attempts to have S get off the
subject of natural history and report on the work in prog-
ress, 238; his recollection of the quays in Nice and Mentone,
240; his utmost courtesy towards his friend's wife, 247;
his limited knowledge of lepidoptera and the sable gloom
of his nature marked like a dark Vanessa with gay flashes,
270; his discovery of Mrs. S\ plan to whisk S to Cedam
and his decision to go there too, 288 , his attitude towards
swans, 319; his affinity with Hazel, 334 r 348; his walk
with S to the weedy spot where the haunted barn once
stood, 347; his objection to *$’s flippant attitude towards
celebrated contemporanes, 376; his contempt for Prof. H.
(not in Index), 377; his overworked memory, 384; his
meeting with Jane Provost and examination of lovely lake-

lnaex

219

side snapshot*, 3V 5 his criticism of the 403-474 lines sec-
tion, 401, his secret guessed, or not guessed, b\ S, his
telling 6 about Dim, and 5 s reaction, 417 his debate on
Prejudice with S, 470 \ his discuss»on of Suicide with him-
self, 493; his surprise at realizing that the Frtnch name of
one melancholy tme is the same as the Zemblan one of
another, 501, his disapproval of ceitam flippant passages
m Canto 1 brce, hu views or sm and fa tb, 549,

his editorial integrity and spiiiluat misciv, 550, his re-
marks on a cert un female student and on tfa numbei and
nature of meals shared with the Shides, 5~9 his delight
and amazement ai * portentous meeting ot s\P ibbs m two
adjacent won.* 590, bis aphorism on fni slue* and the
‘lain, 59* his logeibm in Ced« r n m\I th* bide *xngk/ a
hone>-sKinned lad naked viccpt foi ^ p ir of torn dun-
gurecs, one tromei lej rolkd un, ficquerth feu wuh nougit
ard nuts, but then school sUneC or ih* wither ehang^d,
o09 bis apptwiu *t»< II -s 6J9, ru, <e\ire mill
ustii of quoin os il *n*LS, fioin i V lunfcst etc, sndi is
“pak fn»\ d", * 7 \ his of humor 5SC 1 hia arrival
at Mi O’EVm i l< u irn> h it*** v cdi^d, lus ap-
pie i ihv» of a quoihbci ^nd hi* duihts anent it pmpsrttd
author biv, jouhur or a pn m who mak^s ad

»*mps ard then bdra's a nobh and rme tie in, telling
toul stones about fii\ s aim md p i %uinp htm with hnuJ
practical {otres / 41 his ro» * ’mg i Je owum to p oph*
psyt lioiogiv,al Mock >i me U r oi i c ona £ o* hrwebu*
to a citj onl ^Pty oi sev* ntv mde ha no vb'-’re he woul 1
certainly hive foird i ^oed ’hni), 7 m« letter of
Apnl 2 to * lulx vho k»i t 1 >cU.d up among h'r
treasures ;n her v ilia near N? c when she eat *hu* sum
mer to Rome, '06 mv re s r\ <t in tie sorting ^ +
ramble m th<* evening wnh the pon imuH ••pc Wg of
his work, S02 his remurks on a Uvical *nd ‘mgmsuc mira-
cle, 801 , his borrowing a collection ot f k I me * uttus
from the motor court owner, is 10 , his per.^u tons mo the
bathroom where his tnend *at and shived m the tub, 887,
his participation in a Common Room chssu ion ot his
resemblance to the king, end his find rupuue with L
(not m the Index), 894, be and V shaking with mirth over
tidbits in a college testbook by Prof f (not m the Index),
929 , his sad gesture of weanmss and gentle reproach, 937 ,

220

PALE FIRE

*

a young lecturer in Onhava University vividly recollected,
957; his last meeting with S in the poet’s arbor, etc., 991;
his discovery of the scholarly gardener recalled, 998; his
unsuccessful attempt to save S*s life, and his success in
salvaging the MS, 1000; his arranging to have it published
without the help of two “experts,” Foreword.

Kobaltana , a once fashionable mountain resort near the ruins
of some old barracks now a cold and desolate spot of
difficult access and no importance but still remembered
in military families and forest castles, not in the text.

Kronberg , a snow-capped rocky mountain with a comfortable
hotel, in the Bera Range, 70, 130 , 149,

Krummholz , Gordon , b. a musical prodigy and an “
amusing pet; son of Joseph Lavenders famous sister, Elvina
Krummholz, 408.

Lane , Franklin Knight. American law\er and statesman, 1864-
1921, author of a remarkable fraemenl. 810.

Lass, see Mass.

Lavender, Joseph S., sec O’Donnell, Sylvia.

Male , see Word Golf.

Mandevil , Baron Mi rod or, cousin of Ridonur Mandevil
(</.v.), experimentalist, madman and traitor, 171 .

Mandevil , Baron Radomir, b, man ol fashion and Zem-
blan patriot; K’s throne page, 130; disguised, 149.

Marcel, the fussy, unpleasant, and not always plausible cen-
tral character, pampered by everybody tn Proust's A la
Recherche du Temps Perdu, 181 , 691.

Marrowsky, a, a rudimentary spoonerism, from the name of
a Russian diplomat of tlie early 19th century. Count
Komarovski, famous at foreign courts for mispronouucing
his own name — Makarov ski, Macaronski, Skomorovski, etc.

Mass, Mars , Mare, sec Male.

Multraberg, sec Bera

Niagarin and Andronnikov , two Soviet “experts” still in quest
of a buried treasure, 130, b81, 741; see Crown Jewels.

Nitra and Indra , twin islands off Blawick, 149.

Nodo, Odon's half-brother, b. 1916, son of Leopold O’Don-
nell and of a Zemblan boy impersonator; a cardsharp and
despicable traitor, 171.

Odevalla , a fine town north of Onhava in E. Zcmbla, once
the mayorship of the worthy Zule (“chessrook”) Bretwit,

Index 221

granduncle of Oswin tiretwit ( q.v q.v„ as the crow say),
149 , 286 .

pseudonym of Donald O’Donnell, b. 1915, world-
famous actor and Zemblan patriot; learns from K. about
secret passage but has to Leave tor theater, 130; drives K.
from theater to foot of Mt. Mandcvil, 149; meets K. near
sea cave and escapes with him in motorboat, ibid.; directs
cinema picture in Paris, 171; stays with I avender in Lex,
408; ought not to marry that blubbur-lipped cinemactress,
with untidy hair, 0 ^ 1 ; see also O'Donnell, Sylvia.

O'Donnell , Sylvia, nee O’Connell, born 18^5? 1890?, much-
traveled, much-married mother of Odon (</.v.), 149 , 691;
after marrving and divorcing college president Leopold
O'Donnell in 1915, father ot Odon. she married Peter
Gusev, fin>t Duke of Rahl, and graced Zembla till about
when she married an Oriental prince met in Cha-
monix; aitej a number of other more or less glamorous
marriages she ua-s m the act of divorcing I lone! Lavcndar,
cousin of Joseph, when last seen in this Index

D/eg, Duke of RJil son ot Colonel Gusev, Duke
of Rubl (b. 1S85, still spry); k.’s beloved playmate, killed
in a toboggan accident 1 30.

Onhava, the beautiful capital of Ztmbla, 12. 71, 130 , 149,
171, 181 , 27* 57 */, 8*4, JoOO .

Otar, Courn, heterosexual man of fashion and Zemblan patriot,
b. 19 IS, his bald spot, h(s iv,o teenage mistresses. Fleur
and fjfalda (later Countess C/tar), biue-vemed daughters
of Ceuntcss de F\ler. interesting light etlects, 7L

Paberq, see Bera Range,

Payn. Duke* of, escutcheon of, 270; sec Disa, my Queen.

Foetus, Shade's short: The Sacred Tree, AQ; The Swing, 61;
Mountain View, 92; 7 he Nature of h Ice tricity, 347; one
line from April Rain, 470; one line from Mont Blanc . 782;
opening quatrain ol Art, 957

Potaynik , taynik (q.v.).

Religion * contact with God, 47; the Pope, 85; freedom ot
mind, 101; problem of sin and faith, 549; see Suicide.

Rippleson Caves, sea ca ves in Bhwick, named alter a famous
glass maker who embodied the dapple-and-rmgle play and
other circular reflections on blue-green sea water in his
extraordinary stained glass windows for the Palace, 130,
149.